Breather mode in the many-electron dynamics of semiconductor quantum wells

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of a new breather mode in the electron dynamics of semiconductor quantum wells, characterized through a variational quantum hydrodynamics approach and confirmed by numerical simulations, with potential optical detection.

Contribution

It introduces a non-perturbative variational method to analyze the breather mode in quantum wells, providing new insights into electron collective excitations.

Findings

Existence of a novel breather mode in quantum well electron dynamics

Analytical results agree with numerical simulations of Wigner-Poisson and Hartree equations

Breather mode signatures can be observed in the optical dipole response of asymmetric wells

Abstract

We demonstrate the existence of a novel breather mode in the self-consistent electron dynamics of a semiconductor quantum well. A non-perturbative variational method based on quantum hydrodynamics is used to determine the salient features of the electron breather mode. Numerical simulations of the time-dependent Wigner-Poisson or Hartree equations are shown to be in excellent agreement with our analytical results. For asymmetric quantum wells, a signature of the breather mode is observed in the dipole response, which can be detected by standard optical means.