EFFECTIVE-MASS EIGENFUNCTIONS IN SUPERLATTICES AND THEIR ROLE IN WELL-CAPTURE

The rate of capture into the wells of a superlattice is calculated using the effective-mass eigenfunctions and the superlattice folded spectrum of polar optical phonons. The dependence on well-width is followed for the specific case of 100A barriers. A general trend of diminishing rate with diminishing well-width is obtained, but super-imposed on this is a resonance structure (periodic in well-width) associated with 'nearly' bound states. The results are significantly different from other published work, principally because the latter has been hitherto on the bulk-phonon spectrum, and on single wells.