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Electron transport through quantum-dot (QD) cascades was investigated using the formalism of nonequilibrium Green's functions within the self-consistent Born approximation. Polar coupling to optical phonons, deformation potential coupling to acoustic phonons, as well as anharmonic decay of longitudinal optical phonons were included in the simulation. A QD cascade laser structure comprising two QDs per period was designed and its characteristics were simulated. Significant values of population inversion enabling lasing in the terahertz frequency range were predicted, with operating current densities being more than an order of magnitude smaller than in existing terahertz quantum-well-based quantum-cascade lasers.

In this work, rapid thermal annealing was performed on InGaAs/GaAs quantum dot infrared photodetectors (QDIPs) at different temperatures. The photoluminescence showed a blueshifted spectrum in comparison with the as-grown sample when the annealing temperature was higher than 700 °C, as a result of thermal interdiffusion of the quantum dots (QDs). Correspondingly, the spectral response from the annealed QDIP exhibited a redshift. At the higher annealing temperature of 800 °C, in addition to the largely redshifted photoresponse peak of 7.4 µm (compared with the 6.1 µm of the as-grown QDIP), a high energy peak at 5.6 µm (220 meV) was also observed, leading to a broad spectrum linewidth of 40%. This is due to the large interdiffusion effect which could greatly vary the composition of the QDs and thus increase the relative optical absorption intensity at higher energy. The other important detector characteristics such as dark current, peak responsivity, and detectivity were also measured. It was found that the overall device performance was not affected by low annealing temperature, however, for high annealing temperature, some degradation in device detectivity (but not responsivity) was observed. This is a consequence of increased dark current due to defect formation and increased ground state energy. © 2006 American Institute of Physics \ud \ud

A detailed theoretical and experimental study of the influence of injector doping on the output characteristics and electron heating in midinfrared GaAs/AlGaAs quantum cascade lasers is presented. The employed theoretical model of electron transport was based on a fully nonequilibrium self-consistent Schrödinger-Poisson analysis of the scattering rate and energy balance equations. Three different devices with injector sheet doping densities in the range of (4–6.5)×10(11) cm(–2) have been grown and experimentally characterized. Optimized arsenic fluxes were used for the growth, resulting in high-quality layers with smooth surfaces and low defect densities. A quasilinear increase of the threshold current with sheet injector doping has been observed both theoretically and experimentally. The experimental and calculated current-voltage characteristics are in a very good agreement. A decrease of the calculated coupling constant of average electron temperature versus the pumping current with doping level was found. © 2006 American Institute of Physics \ud \ud \ud \ud

A theoretical model and a design of a magnetic field tunable CdMnTe/CdMgTe terahertz quantum\ud well infrared photodetector are presented. The energy levels and the corresponding wavefunctions\ud were computed from the envelope function Schr¨odinger equation using the effective mass\ud approximation and accounting for Landau quantization and the giant Zeeman effect induced by\ud magnetic confinement. The electron dynamics were modeled within the self-consistent coupled rate\ud equations approach, with all relevant electron-longitudinal optical phonon and electron-longitudinal\ud acoustic phonon scattering included. A perpendicular magnetic field varying between 0 T and 5 T,\ud at a temperature of 1.5 K, was found to enable a large shift of the detection energy, yielding a\ud tuning range between 24.1 meV and 34.3 meV, equivalent to 51.4 μm to 36.1 μm wavelengths. For\ud magnetic fields between 1 T and 5 T, when the electron population of the QWIP is spin-polarized,\ud a reasonably low dark current of ≤1.4×10–² A/cm² and a large responsivity of 0.36−0.64 A/W\ud are predicted.

A method for the calculation of the electronic structure of pyramidal self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots is presented. The method is based on exploiting the C-4 symmetry of the 8-band k·p Hamiltonian with the strain taken into account via the continuum mechanical model. The operators representing symmetry group elements were represented in the plane wave basis and the group projectors were used to find the symmetry adapted basis in which the corresponding Hamiltonian matrix is block diagonal with four blocks of approximately equal size. The quantum number of total quasiangular momentum is introduced and the states are classified according to its value. Selection rules for interaction with electromagnetic field in the dipole approximation are derived. The method was applied to calculate electron and hole quasibound states in a periodic array of vertically stacked pyramidal self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots for different values of the distance between the dots and external axial magnetic field. As the distance between the dots in an array is varied, an interesting effect of simultaneous change of ground hole state symmetry, type, and the sign of miniband effective mass is predicted. This effect is explained in terms of the change of biaxial strain. It is also found that the magnetic field splitting of Kramer's double degenerate states is most prominent for the first and second excited state in the conduction band and that the magnetic field can both separate otherwise overlapping minibands and concatenate otherwise nonoverlapping minibands.

A design for a GaN/AlGaN optically pumped terahertz laser emitting at 34 µm (ΔE~36 meV) is presented. This laser uses a simple three-level scheme where the depopulation of the lower laser level is achieved via resonant longitudinal-optical-phonon emission. The quasibound energies and associated wave functions are calculated with the intrinsic electric field induced by the piezoelectric and the spontaneous polarizations. The structures based on a double quantum well were simulated and the output characteristics extracted using a fully self-consistent rate equation model with all relevant scattering processes included. Both electron-longitudinal-optical phonon and electron-acoustic-phonon interactions were taken into account. The carrier distribution in subbands was assumed to be Fermi–Dirac-like, with electron temperature equal to the lattice temperature, but with different Fermi levels for each subband. A population inversion of 12% for a pumping flux Φ=10(27) cm(–2) s(–1) at room temperature was calculated for the optimized structure. By comparing the calculated modal gain and estimated waveguide and mirror losses the feasibility of laser action up to room temperature is predicted.