AC Large Signal Conduction and Harmonic Generation af a GaAs-AlGaAs Superlattice

Abstract

The prospect of negative differential conductance in Bloch miniband transport predicted by Esaki and Tsu¹ brings into focus the need for an analysis of such features under dynamic conditions. In this paper, we discuss the current response of vertical superlattice transport when a strong ac signal of frequency ω is superposed on a strong dc bias field. The nonlinearity involved results in harmonic generation in conjunction with distortion of the periodic current response, and this is analyzed here using a quasi-analytical balance equation approach, which involves only a few percent of the computational effort of an earlier Monte Carlo simulation². Moreover, our analysis treats random impurity and phonon (acoustic and polar optic) scatterings on a realistic three-dimensional microscopic basis, and is not constrained by the one-dimensional assumptions of other work³.