Influence of longitudinal electric field on the hot-phonon effect in quantum wells

Using the Huang-Zhu model [K. Huang and B.-F. Zhu, Phys. Rev. B 38, 13377 (1988)] for the optical phonons and associated carrier-phonon interactions in semiconductor superlattices, the effects of longitudinal electric field on the energy-loss rates (ELRs) of hot carriers as well as on the hot-phonon effect (HPE) in GaAs/AlAs quantum wells (QWs) are studied systematically. Contributions of various bulklike and interface phonons to the hot-carrier relaxation are compared in detail, and comprehensively analyzed in relation to the intrasubband and intersubband scatterings for quantum cascade lasers. Due to the broken parity of the electron (hole) states in the electric field, the bulklike modes with antisymmetric potentials are allowed in the intrasubband relaxation processes, as well as the modes with symmetric potentials. As the interface phonon scattering is strong only in narrow wells, in which the electric field affects the electron (hole) states little, the ELRs of hot carriers through the interface phonon scattering are not sensitive to the electric field. The HPE on the hot-carrier relaxation process in the medium and wide wells is reduced by the electric field. The influence of the electric field on the hot-phonon effect in quantum cascade lasers is negligible. When the HPE is ignored, the ELRs of hot electrons in wide QWs are decreased noticeably by the electric field, but slightly increased by the field when considering the HPE. In contrast with the electrons, the ELRs of hot holes in wide wells are increased by the field, irrespective of the HPE. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.

A 2x2 optical switch based on plasma dispersion effect in silicon-on-insulator

Based on Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) structure, a 2 x 2 optical switch is fabricated on SOI wafer. Modulation of the refractive index of MZI arms is achieved through free carriers plasma dispersion effect of silicon. The device presents an insertion loss as low as 3.44 dB and a response time as small as 300 ns. The crosstalk and extinction ratio are -15.54 and 14.9 dB, respectively. Detailed analysis and explanation of the operating behaviors are also presented. (C) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Quantum dissipation and broadening mechanisms due to electron-phonon interactions in self-formed InGaN quantum dots

Quantum dissipation and broadening mechanisms in Si-doped InGaN quantum dots are studied via the photoluminescence technique. It is found that the dissipative thermal bath that embeds the quantum dots plays an important role in the photon emission processes. Observed spontaneous emission spectra are modeled with the multimode Brownian oscillator model achieving an excellent agreement between experiment and theory for a wide temperature range. The dimensionless Huang-Rhys factor characterizing the strength of electron-LO-phonon coupling and damping constant accounting for the LO-phonon-bath interaction strength are found to be similar to 0.2 and 200 cm(-1), respectively, for the InGaN QDs. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.

Comparative study on the broadening of exciton luminescence linewidth due to phonon in zinc-blende and wurtzite GaN epilayers

Linewidth broadening of exciton luminescence in wurtzite and zinc-blende GaN epilayers was investigated as a function of temperature with photoluminescence. A widely accepted theoretical model was used to fit the experimental data, so that the coupling parameters between exciton and acoustic and longitudinal optical phonons were obtained for both structures. It was found that the coupling constants of both exciton-acoustic optical phonon coupling and exciton-longitudinal optical phonon coupling for zinc-blende GaN are almost twice as much as the corresponding values of wurtzite GaN. These results show that the relatively strong exciton-phonon scattering seems to be characteristic to zinc-blende GaN film. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.

Longitudinal optic phonon-plasmon coupling in delta-doped metamorphic InAlAs/InGaAs high-electron-mobility transistor structures on GaAs substrates

InAlAs/InGaAs metamorphic high-electron-mobility transistor structures with different spacer layers on GaAs substrates are characterized by Raman measurements. The influence of In0.52Al0.48As spacer thickness on longitudinal optic phonon-plasmon coupling is investigated. It is found that the intensity of GaAs-like longitudinal optic phonon, which couples with collective intersubband transitions of two-dimensional electron gas, is strongly affected by the different subband energy spacings, subband electron concentrations, and wave function distributions, which are determined by different spacer thicknesses. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.

Phonon-induced Raman scattering in GaNAs

The Raman scattering spectra of MBE-grown GaNAs epilayers were investigated. The resonant enhancement of Raman scattering due to the E+ states in the conduction band was observed and the Raman peaks related to the phonons at non-Gamma points of the Brillouin Zone were detected. II was clearly seen that the local vibrational mode induced by nitrogen impurities evolves to the GaN-like lattice phonon mode when the nitrogen content increases. By comparing the Raman spectra measured before and after 850 degreesC rapid thermal annealing, it was tentatively suggested that two weak peaks were induced by the pairing or clustering effect of nitrogen.

Refractive index dispersion measurement on nonlinear optical polymer using V-prism refractometer

By using V-prism refractometer, the refractive indices of a polyetherketone (PEK-c) guest-host polymer system were measured with the polymer in solutions. The Lorenz-Lorentz local field formalism was used in the calculation of the refractive indices of the polymers from the measured indices of the polymer solutions and the pure solvent by using V-prism refractometer. The refractive index dispersions of the polymers were obtained by fitting the measured indices of the polymers to Sellmeyer equation. The method allows for an accuracy in index of 0.7% in the determination of the polymer indices. In addition, a large difference between the indices of the polymer and the solvent, and a higher polymer volume fraction in the measured polymer solution are favorable for a high accuracy. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Quantum confinement of phonon modes in GaAs quantum dots

Phonon modes in spherical GaAs quantum dots (QDs) with up to 11,855 atoms (8 nm in size) are calculated by using an empirical microscopic model. The group theory is employed to reduce the computational intensity, which further allows us to investigate the quantum confinement of phonon modes with different symmetries and reveals a phenomenon that phonon modes with different symmetries have different quantum confinement effect. For zinc-blende structure, the modes with the A(1) symmetry has the strongest quantum confinement effect and the T-1 modes the weakest. This could cause a crossover of symmetries of the highest frequency from A(1) to T-2 when the size of QDs decreases. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd, All rights reserved.

Effect of defects on optical phonon Raman spectra in SiC nanorods

Fabricated one-dimensional (1D) materials often have abundant structural defects. Experimental observation and numerical calculation indicate that the broken translation symmetry due to structural defects may play a more important role than the quantum confinement effect in the Raman features of optical phonons in polar semiconductor quantum wires such as SiC nanorods, (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

High-field cyclotron resonance and electron-phonon interaction in modulation-doped multiple quantum well structures

A systematic study of electron cyclotron resonance (CR) in two sets of GaAs/Al0.3Ga0.7As modulation-doped quantum-well samples (well widths between 12 and 24 nm) has been carried out in magnetic fields up to 30 T. Polaron CR is the dominant transition in the region of GaAs optical phonons for the set of lightly doped samples, and the results are in good agreement with calculations that include the interaction with interface optical phonons. The results from the heavily doped set are markedly different. At low magnetic fields (below the GaAs reststrahlen region), all three samples exhibit almost identical CR which shows little effect of the polaron interaction due to screening and Pauli-principle effects. Above the GaAs LO-phonon region (B > similar to 23 T), the three samples behave very differently. For the most lightly doped sample (3 x 10(11) cm(-2)) only one transition minimum is observed, which can be explained as screened polaron CR. A sample of intermediate density (6 x 10(11) cm(-2)) shows two lines above 23 T; the higher frequency branch is indistinguishable from the positions of the single line of the low density sample. For the most heavily, doped sample (1.2 x 10(12) cm(-2)) there is no evidence of high frequency resonance, and the strong, single line observed is indistinguishable from the lower branch observed from sample with intermediate doping density. We suggest that the low frequency branch in our experiment is a magnetoplasmon resonance red-shifted by disorder, and the upper branch is single-particle-like screened polaron CR. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Dispersion characteristics of nanometer-scaled silicon rib waveguides

We investigate the dispersion properties of nanometer-scaled silicon waveguides with channel and rib cross section around the optical fiber communication wavelength and systematically study their relationship with the key structural parameters of the waveguide. The simulation results show that the introduction of an extra degree of freedom in the rib depth enables the rib waveguide more flexible in engineering the group velocity dispersion (GVD) compared with the channel waveguide. Besides, we get the structural parameters of the waveguides that can realize zero-GVD at 1550 nm.

Phonon-limited mobility in two-dimensional semiconductors with spin-orbit coupling

The authors demonstrate that the Rashba spin-orbit interaction in low-dimensional semiconductors can enhance or reduce the electron-phonon scattering rate by as much as 25%. The underlying mechanism is that the electron-phonon scattering phase space for the upper (lower) Rashba band is significantly enhanced (suppressed) by the spin-orbit interaction. While the scattering time decreases for the upper level, the mobility of the level increases due to an additional term in the electron velocity. (C) 2007 American Institute of Physics.

Optimization and comparison of single- and dual-pump fiber-optical parametric amplifiers with dispersion fluctuations

Solutions for fiber-optical parametric amplifiers (FOPAs) with dispersion fluctuations are derived using matrix operators. On the basis of the propagation matrix product and the hybrid genetic algorithm, we have optimized and compared single- and dual-pump FOPAs with zero-dispersion-wavelength variations. The simulations prove that the design of FOPAs involves multimodal function optimization problems. The numerical results show that dual-pump FOPAs are highly sensitive to dispersion fluctuations whereas dispersion variations have less impact on the gain of single-pump FOPAs. To increase signal gain and reduce ripple, dual-pump FOPAs, instead of single-pump FOPAs, have to be carefully optimized with a suitable multisegment fiber structure rather than a one-segment fiber structure. The different combinations of multisegment fibers can provide highly different gain properties. The increase in gain is at the cost of the ripple.

Six-wave mixing phase-dispersion by optical heterodyne detection in dressed reverse N-type four-level system

We have investigated the dressed effects of non-degenerate four-wave mixing (NDFWM) and demonstrated a phase-sensitive method of studying the fifth-order nonlinear susceptibility due to atomic coherence in RN-type four-level system. In the presence of a strong coupling field, NDFWM spectrum exhibits Autler-Townes splitting, accompanied by either suppression or enhancement of the NDFWM signal, which is directly related to the competition between the absorption and dispersion contributions. The heterodyne-detected nonlinear absorption and dispersion of six-wave mixing signal in the RN-type system show that the hybrid radiation-matter detuning damping oscillation is in the THz range and can be controlled and modified through the colour-locked correlation of twin noisy fields.