Nonlinear absorption coefficient and optically detected electrophonon resonance in cylindrical GaAs/AlAs quantum wires with different confined phonon models

Abstract

A quantum kinetic equation for electrons interacting with confined phonons is used to investigate the nonlinear absorption of an intense electromagnetic wave by electrons in cylindrical GaAs/AlAs quantum wires. The analytic expression for absorption coefficient is calculated for three models of confined optical phonons: the dielectric continuum (DC), hydrodynamic continuum (HC), and Huang-Zhu (HZ) models. The absorption coefficient depends on the square of the electromagnetic wave amplitude. The electrophonon resonance and optically detected electrophonon resonance (ODEPR) are observed through the absorption spectrum. The full width at half maximum (the line-width) of the ODEPR peaks is obtained by a computational method. The line-width is found to increase with increasing temperature and decrease with increasing the quantum wire radius. In particular, numerical results show that the DC and HZ models lead to a similar behaviour of electron - confined phonon interaction whereas the HC model results in a quite different one, especially at small quantum wire radius. For large quantum wire radii, above mentioned phonon models have equivalent contributions to the ODEPR line-width.