Simulation of light propagation in thin semiconductor films with non-local electron-photon interaction

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical and numerical framework for simulating light propagation in thin semiconductor films, incorporating non-local electron-photon interactions using non-equilibrium Green's functions, and compares it with traditional methods.

Contribution

It introduces a non-local interaction model for light in semiconductor films within the Green's function formalism, extending beyond local approximations used in conventional methods.

Findings

Simulation results agree with transfer matrix method for local coupling.

Deviations from local approximation are small for 100 nm GaAs films.

The framework captures non-local effects in light propagation.

Abstract

The propagation of light in layered semiconductor media is described theoretically and simulated numerically within the framework of the non-equilibrium Green's function formalism as used for state-of-the-art nanodevice simulations, treating the non-local interaction of leaky photonic modes with the electronic states of thin semiconductor films on a non-equilibrium quantum statistical mechanics level of theory. For a diagonal photon self-energy corresponding to local coupling, the simulation results for a 500 nm GaAs slab under normal incidence are in excellent agreement with the predictions from the conventional transfer matrix method. The deviations of the local approximation from the result provided by the fully non-local photon self-energy for a 100 nm GaAs film are found to be small.