Rights statement: © 1993 The American Physical Society
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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Intersubband relaxation of two-dimensional electrons in heterostructures
AU - Falko, Vladimir
N1 - © 1993 The American Physical Society
PY - 1993/5/15
Y1 - 1993/5/15
N2 - We calculate the lifetime of a nonequilibrium electron in the first excited subband in the low-density heterostructure where this photocreated carrier occurs at the last stage of its cooling. The electron interaction with acoustic phonons gives the dominant intersubband relaxation mechanism, if the intersubband energy splitting and the Fermi energy splitting are relatively small, 1 > epsilon(f)/DELTA10 > 0.7-0.8. In GaAs-AlxGa1-xAs heterostructures the intersubband relaxation determines the excited-electron lifetime to be of the order of tau(phon) approximately nanoseconds which depends slightly on the value of the two-dimensional electron density. When the ratio epsilon(F)/DELTA10 is smaller, the intersubband relaxation is determined by the Auger-like electron-electron scattering whose rate can increase up to the value tau(Aug)-1 approximately 10(10) sec-1.
AB - We calculate the lifetime of a nonequilibrium electron in the first excited subband in the low-density heterostructure where this photocreated carrier occurs at the last stage of its cooling. The electron interaction with acoustic phonons gives the dominant intersubband relaxation mechanism, if the intersubband energy splitting and the Fermi energy splitting are relatively small, 1 > epsilon(f)/DELTA10 > 0.7-0.8. In GaAs-AlxGa1-xAs heterostructures the intersubband relaxation determines the excited-electron lifetime to be of the order of tau(phon) approximately nanoseconds which depends slightly on the value of the two-dimensional electron density. When the ratio epsilon(F)/DELTA10 is smaller, the intersubband relaxation is determined by the Auger-like electron-electron scattering whose rate can increase up to the value tau(Aug)-1 approximately 10(10) sec-1.
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevB.47.13585
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevB.47.13585
M3 - Journal article
VL - 47
SP - 13585
EP - 13589
JO - Physical review B
JF - Physical review B
SN - 0163-1829
IS - 20
ER -