Stochastic current switching in bistable resonant tunneling systems

Abstract

Current-voltage characteristics of resonant-tunneling structures often exhibit intrinsic bistabilities. In the bistable region of the I-V curve one of the two current states is metastable. The system switches from the metastable state to the stable one at a random moment in time. The mean switching time τdepends exponentially on the bias measured from the boundary of the bistable region V_{th}. We find full expressions for τ(including prefactors) as functions of bias, sample geometry, and in-plane conductivity. Our results take universal form upon appropriate renormalization of the threshold voltage V_{th}. We also show that in large samples the switching initiates inside, at the edge, or at a corner of the sample depending on the parameters of the system.

21 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Lifetime of metastable states in resonant tunneling structures
• Scaling and crossovers in activated escape near a bifurcation point

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