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Title: Study of hot phonons and hot carriers in GaAs under picosecond optical pulse excitation

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:6824866

The ability of light scattering techniques to determine simultaneously many of the important properties of photoexcited electron-hole plasmas in GaAs was demonstrated. Scattering due to plasmons or coupled LO-plasmon modes can be used to determine the plasma density provided the spatial profile of the density is known. The distribution function and the drift velocity of the plasma in the direction of the laser beam can be determined from the SPE spectra. The fact that the plasma density can be determined independently of the distribution function enabled me to show that the electron distribution function in high density EHP in GaAs is nonthermal equilibrium within approx. 20 psec of excitation. This conclusion is consistent with previous experiments on photoexcited EHP in GaAs using picosecond lasers, although the form of the nonequilibrium distribution was not determined in the earlier measurements. At the moment there is very little information on the properties of transient high density EHP in semiconductors so it is too early to derive theoretical justifications for the power law distribution functions I deduced. However, one may speculate that this may have something to do with the slowing of hot carrier relaxation by emission of LO phonons due to screening of the Froehlich interaction. Also the rapid expansion of the EHP may have important consequence on the thermalization of the EHP.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley Lab., CA (USA)
DOE Contract Number:
AC03-76SF00098
OSTI ID:
6824866
Report Number(s):
LBL-17825; ON: DE84013243
Resource Relation:
Other Information: Thesis
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English