1998/11/17 by A. L. Ivanov, P. B. Littlewood, H. Haug · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Semiconductor Quantum Structures and Devices #Strong Light-Matter Interactions #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.59.5032
19 pages, 9 figures. Phys. Rev. B (accepted for publication)
arxiv created 1998/11/17 · openalex publication_date 1999/02/15 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Quasiequilibrium relaxational thermodynamics is developed to understand LA-phonon-assisted thermalization of Bose-Einstein distributed excitons in quantum wells. We study quantum-statistical effects in the relaxational dynamics of the effective temperature of excitons T=T(t). When T is less than the degeneracy temperature T0, well-developed Bose-Einstein statistics of quantum-well excitons leads to nonexponential and density-dependent thermalization. At low bath temperatures Tb\ensuremath→0, the thermalization of quantum statistically degenerate excitons effectively slows down and T(t)\ensuremath∝1/lnt. We also analyze the optical decay of Bose-Einstein distributed excitons in perfect quantum wells, and show how nonclassical statistics influences the effective lifetime \ensuremathτopt. In particular, \ensuremathτopt of a strongly degenerate gas of excitons is given by 2\ensuremathτR, where \ensuremathτR is the intrinsic radiative lifetime of quasi-two-dimensional excitons. Kinetics of resonant photoluminescence of quantum-well excitons during their thermalization is studied within the thermodynamic approach and taking into account Bose-Einstein statistics. We find density-dependent photoluminescence dynamics of statistically degenerate excitons. Numerical modeling of the thermalization and photoluminescence kinetics of quasi-two-dimensional excitons are given for GaAs/AlxGa_1\ensuremath-xAs quantum wells.