Simultaneous effects of the confinement of polar optical phonons and spin-orbit coupling on the free carrier absorption of a nanowire

Abstract

The free carrier absorption of light in a quantum wire is studied for the case when electrons are scattered by polar optical phonons, taking into account both the phonon confinement and the Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interactions. The dependencies of the absorption coefficient on the energies of the incident photons and the confining potential as well as on the temperature and electric field strength are investigated. We confirm that the spin-orbit interaction leads to an overall increase in the light absorption coefficient. It is shown that for the intrasubband electronic transitions the peaks of the absorption coefficient are obtained when the photon energy coincides with the energy of the LO phonon. Moreover, the spin-orbit interaction leads to a blue-shift of the absorption peak.