Electron-longitudinal acoustic phonon interaction

Summary

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The electron-longitudinal acoustic phonon interaction is an interaction that can take place between an electron and a longitudinal acoustic (LA) phonon in a material such as a semiconductor.

Displacement operator of the LA phonon edit

The equations of motion of the atoms of mass M which locates in the periodic lattice is

 ,

where   is the displacement of the nth atom from their equilibrium positions.

Defining the displacement   of the  th atom by  , where   is the coordinates of the  th atom and   is the lattice constant,

the displacement is given by  

Then using Fourier transform:

 

and

 .

Since   is a Hermite operator,

 

From the definition of the creation and annihilation operator  

  is written as
 

Then   expressed as

 

Hence, using the continuum model, the displacement operator for the 3-dimensional case is

 ,

where   is the unit vector along the displacement direction.

Interaction Hamiltonian edit

The electron-longitudinal acoustic phonon interaction Hamiltonian is defined as  

 ,

where   is the deformation potential for electron scattering by acoustic phonons.[1]

Inserting the displacement vector to the Hamiltonian results to

 

Scattering probability edit

The scattering probability for electrons from   to   states is

 
 

Replace the integral over the whole space with a summation of unit cell integrations

 

where  ,   is the volume of a unit cell.

 

See also edit

Notes edit

  1. ^ Hamaguchi, Chihiro (2017). Basic Semiconductor Physics. Graduate Texts in Physics (3 ed.). Springer. p. 292. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-66860-4. ISBN 978-3-319-88329-8.

References edit

  • Hamaguchi, Chihiro (2017). Basic Semiconductor Physics. Graduate Texts in Physics (3 ed.). Springer. pp. 265–363. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-66860-4. ISBN 978-3-319-88329-8.
  • Yu, Peter Y.; Cardona, Manuel (2005). Fundamentals of Semiconductors (3rd ed.). Springer.