Nonequilibrium phonon propagation in high-purity CdTe

Abstract

Propagation of nonequilibrium acoustic phonons in samples of high-purity CdTe (impurity content ∼1016 cm−3) was studied using the heat pulse technique under pulsed photoexcitation. An analysis of nonequilibrium phonon propagation made by comparing the experimental response with Monte Carlo calculations assuming samples to be without twins provided an estimate for the spontaneous anharmonic phonon decay constant AL=2×10−52 s−1 Hz−5. The probability of free phonon transit through a twin boundary in a sample with twin structure was estimated as AC=0.96.