Eur. Phys. J. B 33, 9-14 (2003)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2003-00135-2

Interface phonon assisted transition in double quantum well

¹ State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 865 Changning Road, Shanghai 200050, PR China
² Institute for Microstructural Sciences, National Research Council, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0R6, Canada

Corresponding author: ^a bhwu@263.net

Received: 22 December 2002
Published online: 23 May 2003

Abstract

A detailed calculation of interface phonon assisted electron intersubband transition in double GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well structure is presented. Our calculation concentrates on the lowest two subbands which can be designed to be in resonance with a given interface phonon mode. Various phonon mode profiles display quasi-symmetric or quasi-antisymmetric shapes. The quasi-antisymmetric phonon modes give rise to much larger transition rates than those assisted by quasi-symmetric ones. The transition rate reaches a maximum when the subband separation coincides with a given phonon mode energy. The calculation procedure presented here can be easily applied to the design and simulation of other low dimensional semiconductor structures, such as quantum cascade lasers.