Acoustical-phonon-assisted resonant magneto-tunnelling in double-barrier heterostructures

Abstract

Acoustical-phonon-assisted resonant magneto-tunnelling in a double-barrier heterostructure has been considered. The calculations have been carried out within the coherent tunnelling model where the tunnelling current is related to the intra-well electron Green function. The magneto-tunnelling device is shown to be a convenient tool to study electron - phonon interaction since the effective coupling factor increases with increasing magnetic field. Our numerical calculations as well as analytical results for several limiting cases demonstrate that both dc and differential conductance profiles are sensitive to the presence of non-equilibrium phonons, as well as to their frequency distribution. In particular, we believe that our results can be useful for detection and spectroscopy of non-equilibrium acoustical phonons.