Abstract
This chapter discusses the classical optical response of a superlattice (SL) in terms of the macroscopic dielectric functions of its constituents. It provides a detailed description of the elementary excitations in the SL, including collective excitations—such as plasmons and polaritons. The chapter also briefly reviews the effect of nonlocal dielectric functions. The first GaAs/GaAlAs SL represents a milestone in material engineering through the use of molecular beam epitaxy technology. It consists of a periodic repetition of alternating layers of lattice-matched GaAs and Ga1-x AlxAs. The properties of the bulk materials are often retained in the direction perpendicular to stacking, whereas if the layer width is less than the Bohr radius for the bulk material, novel quantum mechanical confinement effects are obtained. The band structure of a metallic SL is very different from those of the constituents, if the layer thickness is only one or a few atomic layers thick.
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