Lifetime of metastable states in resonant tunneling structures

TL;DR

This paper studies how long metastable states last in resonant tunneling devices, revealing that the lifetime increases exponentially with voltage and depends on sample size, providing insights into switching dynamics.

Contribution

It presents a detailed analysis of the lifetime of metastable states in resonant tunneling structures, highlighting size-dependent exponential growth of switching times.

Findings

Lifetime grows exponentially with voltage in the bistable region.

Logarithm of lifetime scales as voltage to the 3/2 power in small samples.

In larger samples, the lifetime's logarithm is linearly proportional to voltage.

Abstract

We investigate the transport of electrons through a double-barrier resonant-tunneling structure in the regime where the current-voltage characteristics exhibit bistability. In this regime one of the states is metastable, and the system eventually switches from it to the stable state. We show that the mean switching time grows exponentially as the voltage across the device is tuned from the its boundary value into the bistable region. In samples of small area we find that the logarithm of the lifetime is proportional to the voltage (measured from its boundary value) to the 3/2 power, while in larger samples the logarithm of the lifetime is linearly proportional to the voltage.