Rearrangement of resonant-tunneling structure in the electric field revealed by complementary photoluminescence and vertical transport characterization of the GaAs/AlGaAs long-period superlattices

Multi quantum-well long-period structures are promising for a number of important applications including the far infrared intersubband-transition-based narrow-band radiation devices, microwave resonant-tunneling and self-sustained current oscillation generators, multilevel-logic element devices based on the recently found switching effect between the multistable current states, terahertz emission detectors. All devices have in common the operation dependence on resonant-tunneling rearrangement effects in the long-period structure. We present the results of optical investigation of resonant-tunneling rearrangement processes in long-period GaAs/AlGaAs superlattice structures under application of vertical electric field by means of low-temperature photoluminescence (PL) technique in comparisons with the data of vertical transport measurements performed simultaneously on the same structures. The effect of appearance of the new PL peaks accompanied by suppression of the old ones with increasing bias voltage has been detected, resulting from the Stark shift phenomenon. PL intensity dependences on the applied voltage are presented for the first time which complement the measured current-voltage data. The transition effect from bound (exciton) to free (electron and hole) states in electric field is observed. It is shown that the optical research method can be more sensitive in some situations to provide the crucial information about the resonant-tunneling rearrangement effects even under condition when the ordinary current-voltage measurements do not reveal any features.