Negative damping of terahertz plasmons in counter-streaming double-layer two-dimensional electron gases

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Abstract The plasmon excitation in two-dimensional electron gases (2DEGs) is a significant way of achieving micro-nanoscale terahertz (THz) devices. Here, we establish a kinetic simulation model to study the THz plasmons amplification in a semiconductor double-quantum-well system with counter-streaming electron drift velocities. By comparing the simulation results with theoretical dispersion relations, we confirm two competing mechanisms of negative damping suitable for THz amplification: Cherenkov-type two-stream instability and a new non-Cherenkov mechanism called kinetic relaxation instability. The former is caused by the interlayer coupling of two slow plasmon modes and only exists when the drift velocities are much greater than the fermi velocities. The latter is a statistical effect caused by the momentum relaxation of electron-impurity scattering and predominates at lower drift velocities. We show that an approximate kinetic dispersion relation can accurately predict the wave growth rates of the two mechanisms. The results also indicate that the saturated plasmonic waves undergo strong nonlinearities such as wave distortion, frequency downshift, wave-packet formation, and spectrum broadening. The nonlinear evolution can be interpreted as the merging of bubble structures in the electron phase-space distribution. The present results not only reveal the potential mechanisms of the plasmonic instabilities in double-layer 2DEGs, but also provide a new guideline for the design of on-chip THz amplifiers.