0000000000146905
AUTHOR
J. O. White
Cooling of Hot Electrons in Amorphous Silicon
ABSTRACTMeasurements of the cooling rate of hot carriers in amorphous silicon are made with a two-pump, one-probe technique. The experiment is simulated with a rate-equation model describing the energy transfer between a population of hot carriers and the lattice. An energy transfer rate proportional to the temperature difference is found to be consistent with the experimental data while an energy transfer independent of the temperature difference is not. This contrasts with the situation in crystalline silicon. The measured cooling rates are sufficient to explain the difficulty in observing avalanche effects in amorphous silicon.
Enhanced diffraction of light in GaAs microcavities
We theoretically analyze the diffraction of light by gratings that are photogenerated in Fabry–Perot microcavities. The coupled-wave theory of volume gratings is combined with appropriate boundary conditions to yield expressions for the diffraction efficiency. Multiple round trips within the cavity are seen to increase the effective grating thickness and therefore the efficiency. Numerical calculations specific to GaAs microcavities show that the diffraction efficiency can be enhanced by more than 2 orders of magnitude at the resonant wavelengths.