Effect of the electronic confinement potential on the electron–LO-phonon interaction energy in a quantum well

Abstract

We investigated the effect of the electronic confinement potential on the electron–LO-phonon (el–LO-ph) interaction energy in a quantum well by using the variational method. In this work, the el–LO-ph interaction energy in the infinite (I) and finite (F) square potential quantum wells (SPQW) is calculated as a function of the well-width for all four different confined-optical-phonon (COP) models. The result shows that the el-LO-ph interaction energy in a quantum well is affected strongly by the electronic confinement potential for all four COP models. Except for the Ridley-Babiker model, the el-LO-ph interaction energy in the ISPQW is always larger than that in the FSPQW for both the lowest phonon modes of different COP models in the narrow well case. The Fuchs-Kliewer and the Knipp-Reineck models have a good agreement in the description of the el-LO-ph interaction for the ISPQW, while that is the Fuchs-Kliewer and the Huang-Zhu models for the FSPQW. Among the above four models, the Fuchs-Kliewer model is the most effective.