Inelastic quantum transport in superlattices: success and failure of the Boltzmann equation

Abstract

Electrical transport in semiconductor superlattices is studied within a fully self-consistent quantum transport model based on nonequilibrium Green functions, including phonon and impurity scattering. We compute both the drift velocity-field relation and the momentum distribution function covering the whole field range from linear response to negative differential conductivity. The quantum results are compared with the respective results obtained from a Monte Carlo solution of the Boltzmann equation. Our analysis thus sets the limits of validity for the semiclassical theory in a nonlinear transport situation in the presence of inelastic scattering.

arXiv commentfinal version with minor changes, to appear in Physical Review Letters, sceduled tentatively for July, 26 (1999)

References in corpus (2)

• Quantum transport: The link between standard approaches in superlattices
• Dynamical Localization and Absolute Negative Conductance in an ac driven double quantum well

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