VALIDITY OF THE SEMICLASSICAL INTERPRETATION OF RESONANT MAGNETOTUNNELING SPECTROSCOPY EXPERIMENTS

According to the semiclassical interpretation of resonant-magnetotunneling- spectroscopy experiments, a plot of the resonant-tunneling-diode (current) peak bias versus transverse magnetic field should give (after appropriate scaling of the axes) the zero-field E(k) dispersion relations for the quantum well of the device. Here we derive a general criterion for the validity of this interpretation. We find that, in most devices, for carriers tunneling a distance z0 into a quantum well of width w, so long as the ratio =w/z0 is sufficiently small the semiclassical interpretation is justified, the error being at worst of order, but usually only of order 2. © 1994 The American Physical Society.