Plasma Instability Driven Coherent Submillimeter Radiation Emitters
Abstract
We have introduced and studied lower dimensional solid state systems which could lead to experimental verification of current driven plasma instabilities, with potential device applications providing compact coherent Terahertz sources, A new approach. based on bounded systems in slab geometries (e.g. specially designed quantum well structures), shows that proper extraction and injection of carriers to maintain the desired nonequilibrium carrier distribution. leads to plasma instabilities in such systems. A complete theoretical framework was developed for transport and response of current driven non-equilibrium steady state systems. An interactive program was set up with the Tech. Univ. Vienna for experimental verification of these concepts. Quantitative agreement has been obtained for current voltage characteristics, validating the transport model. The predicted plasma and electromagnetic responses have been partially verified and will be further tested soon. We developed: energy level pair formalism for plasma modes and instabilities; self consistent formalism for non-equilibrium steady state systems' generalized RPA formalism for intersubband electron electron scattering including a magnetic field: intersubband electron-LO phonon scattering formalism; formuli for injection and extraction rates from transfer matrix; applications to various experiments for transport and response in quantum well structures.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 2001
- Accession Number
- ADA388936
Entities
People
- K. Kempa
- P. Bakshi
Organizations
- Boston College