Carrier kinetics and population inversion in Landau level system in cascade GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well structures

Abstract

The carrier distribution over Landau levels was studied in resonant tunneling GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well structures under tunneling pumping of the upper subband. The numerical calculations of the Landau levels population for various values of pumping intensity (tunneling time), magnetic field and the structure doping were carried out. The effect of various scattering mechanisms, as two-electron (electron–electron scattering) as single-electron (acoustic phonon and interface roughness scattering) ones on level population was studied. The population inversion between the zeroth Landau level of the upper subband and the first Landau level of the lowest subband was shown to exist in wide range of the magnetic field strength thus providing the possibility of wide range tunable stimulated terahertz emission.