Photon Assisted Electric Field Domains in Semiconductor Doped Superlattices

TL;DR

This paper investigates photon-assisted tunneling in doped semiconductor superlattices, revealing how THz radiation influences electric field domain formation and multistability through Coulomb interactions and photon sidebands.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent model accounting for Coulomb interactions and photon-assisted processes, highlighting new multistability regions and the role of virtual photonic sidebands.

Findings

Photon-assisted tunneling affects electric field domains.

THz radiation induces multistability in superlattices.

Virtual photonic sidebands support electric field domains.

Abstract

We study photon-assisted tunneling (PAT) through weakly-coupled doped semiconductor superlattices (SL's) in the high voltage regime. A self-consistent model which treats the Coulomb interaction in a mean field approximation is considered. We discuss the formation of electric field domains in the presence of THz radiation and the appearance of new multistability regions caused by the combined effect of the strong non linearity coming from the Coulomb interaction and the new PAT channels.We show how the electric field domains can be supported by the virtual photonic sidebands due to multiple photon emission and absorption.