TRANSITION MATRIX APPROACH FOR MONTE-CARLO SIMULATION OF COUPLED ELECTRON-PHONON PHOTON DYNAMICS

A new approach for simulating the dynamics of electrons, phonons, and photons is described. The technique provides a Monte Carlo simulation of particle dynamics without the statistical noise associated with direct Monte Carlo simulation, treats physical phenomena with a wide range of time scales, and has a good computational efficiency. A transition matrix is first precomputed by direct Monte Carlo simulation. Particle populations are then updated at regular time steps by simple matrix multiplication while correcting for nonlinear effects such as carrier-carrier scattering, band filling, hot phonons, etc. The technique is well suited to studies of quantum well laser devices and pump-probe experiments where direct Monte Carlo simulation is exceedingly difficult. (C) 1995 American Institute of Physics.