Kinetics of electron-hole plasma condensation in a supersaturated gas of free excitons in pure germanium

Abstract

Recently, a theory describing the nucleation of electronhole droplets (EHD) in a supersaturated gas of free excitons (FE) has been introduced. This theory yields an expression for the EHD nucleation rate which has been used to generalize Pokrovskii’s phenomenological rate equations. Their numerical solutions are discussed for slowly rising pulses of low-intensity excitation. The theoretical predictions are compared with the measured time dependence of the concurrent EHD and FE luminescence build-up in pure Ge.