Dr Paul Kinsler. [Acknowledgements & Feedback]


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XKEYWORD: Register-1992

Microscopic basis for a sum rule for polar-optical-phonon scattering of carriers in heterostructures

*copied*

<> (40)  TI: MICROSCOPIC BASIS FOR A SUM-RULE FOR POLAR-OPTICAL-PHONON 
<>           SCATTERING OF CARRIERS IN HETEROSTRUCTURES
<>       AU: REGISTER_LF
<>       NA: UNIV ILLINOIS,BECKMAN INST,URBANA,IL,61801
<>           UNIV ILLINOIS,COORDINATED SCI LAB,URBANA,IL,61801
<>       JN: PHYSICAL REVIEW B-CONDENSED MATTER, 1992, Vol.45, No.15, 
<>           pp.8756-8759
<>       IS: 0163-1829
<>       DT: Note
<>       AB: A fully microscopic model of the carrier-phonon interaction is 
<>           employed to obtain a sum rule for polar-optical-phonon 
<>           scattering of carriers in semiconductor heterostructures. In 
<>           1989, Mori and Ando, considering diatomic polar semiconductors 
<>           and using a dielectric continuum model to derive the phonon 
<>           modes, derived a sum rule for the carrier-polar-optical-phonon 
<>           interaction in single and double planar heterostructures that 
<>           related and constrained the partial contribution from each 
<>           branch of the optical-phonon spectrum to the total interaction.
<>           Here again such a sum rule is derived, but this work differs in
<>           two important ways: (1) Fully microscopic models of the phonons
<>           and the carrier-phonon interaction are employed, and (2) the 
<>           results are valid for any semiconductor heterostructure 
<>           regardless of geometry or materials, including alloy and 
<>           nonpolar constituents. It is demonstrated that this sum rule 
<>           reproduces the usual scattering-rate result in the bulk-crystal
<>           limit. The derivation of this sum rule requires no assumptions 
<>           about the functional form of the phonon modes; rather it 
<>           employs only the inherent orthogonality and mathematical 
<>           completeness of the classical vibrational modes over the 
<>           crystal-lattice degrees of freedom, relationships valid for any
<>           harmonically coupled system of particles. Thus this work 
<>           provides independent theoretical support for the sum rule of 
<>           Mori and Ando and extends the sum rule to arbitrary 
<>           heterostructure geometries and nonmetallic materials.
<>       KP: ELECTRON

This is a generalisation of the Mori and Ando (Mori-A-1989) sum-rule.

This is for a system of harmonically coupled ions with phonon modes of uniform energy. As a result it ignores the practical issue of momentum and (kind of) energy conservation, as any scattering event is equally likely to produce any phonon -- hence the phonon overlap integrals decouple from the electronic ones and the sum-rule holds (as the phonon modes are orthonormal and complete).

So does it not hold in general, but it will near the zone-centre of a single LO-phonon branch (see Babiker-Z-1998) -- or a hybrid-phonon branch that is mostly LO-phonon (ie is weakly hybridised).

OLD: I suspected the validity of the sum-rule, on the basis that hybrid-phonon solutions would span a subset of the wave-function space spanned by all the individual phonon basis modes (implicit assumption, based off Ridley-1993). However, these Ridley hybrid-phonons have quite 'tight' boundary conditions, and in a thick multilayer heterostructure the boundary-conditions might be effectively less restrictive -- in the same way a wide quantum-well has more closely spaces and 'continuum-like' wavefunctions than a narrow quantum-well. So for a very thick, not very heterogeneous structure (which could be assumed to minimse phonon confinement in one layer), the space spanned by the hybrid-phonons might well be 'most-of' that spanned by all the individual phonon basis modes. However, see above for Babiker-Z-1998s zone center explanation -- these do not seem equivalent. So?

XINDEX: sum-rule, log-file, hybrid-phonon, Babiker-Z-1998, index-file, log-file.

19971212


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