ABSOLUTE NEGATIVE-RESISTANCE IN DOUBLE-BARRIER HETEROSTRUCTURES IN A STRONG LASER FIELD

A tunneling current through a double-barrier heterostructure is considered in a strong laser field. By absorbing or emitting photons an electron can penetrate through the barrier structure. As shown, the current may have both positive and negative signs dependent on the intensity of the field. I-V characteristics have a peak structure with the peaks located by an energy of two photons apart from each other. The negative amplitude of the current demonstrates the effect of an absolute negative resistance. The I-V characteristics are studied at different temperatures because of a hot-electron-distribution Fermi function in the strong field. The expression for the tunneling current is generalized to asymmetric barriers, and to the case when the Fermi energy is larger than the energy of one photon as well. © 1995 The American Physical Society.