Enhancement of the decay rate of nonequilibrium carrier distributions due to scattering-in processes

Abstract

We show that, for some semiconductor devices and physical experiments, processes which scatter electrons {\em into} a state $|\mathbf{k}⟩$ can contribute strongly to the decay of a nonequilibrium electron occupation of $|\mathbf{k}⟩$. For electrons, the decay rate $\gamma (\mathbf{k})$ is given by the sum of the total scattering-out {\em and scattering-in} rates of state $|\mathbf{k}⟩$. The scattering-in term, which is often neglected in calculations, increases $\gamma (\mathbf{k})$ of low energy electrons injected into semidegenerate systems, which includes many doped semiconductor structures at nonzero temperatures, particularly those of reduced dimensions.

arXiv comment4 pages, figure available on request, RevTex 2.0. (NIST-BAS-93-01)

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