Resonant Optical Absorption in Semiconductor Quantum Wells

Abstract

We have calculated the intraband photon absorption coefficients of hottwo-dimensional electrons interacting with polar-optical phonon modes inquantum wells. The dependence of the photon absorption coefficients on thephoton wavelength λ is obtained both by using the quantummechanical theory and by the balance-equation theory. It is found that thephoton absorption spectrum displays a local resonant maximum, correspondingto LO energy, and the absorption peak vanishes with increasing theelectronic temperature.