a Institute for Theoretical Atomic and Molecular Physics, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
b Beam Theory Section, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC 20375, USA
Abstract:
Auger recombination rates in mesoscopic semiconductor structures have been studied as a function of energy band parameters and heterostructure size. It is shown that nonthreshold Auger processes stimulated by the presence of heteroboundaries become the dominant nonradiative recombination channel in nanometer size semiconductor structures. The size dependence of luminescence quantum yields in nanostructures and microcrystals are discussed. Auger-like collisions of electrons and heavy holes are shown to serve as “accelerators” of thermalization processes in semiconductor quantum dots.