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Optical Dephasing and Acoustic Plasmon Undamping in Highly Excited Semiconductors

S.W. Koch, D.C. Scott, and R. Binder

Optical dephasing, i.e., the decay of the polarization field in a semiconductor, is a direct consequence of electron and hole scattering. Under high excitation conditions or in a semiconductor amplifier/laser, carrier-carrier scattering is often the dominant relaxation mechanism, which also leads to energy-level broadening and dynamical screening of the Coulomb interaction potential. The theoretical analysis of carrier-carrier scattering is based on the quantum Boltzmann equation. Even though this equation is well known in the many-body literature, its solution for high excitation conditions and nonequilibrium carrier distributions is a substantial challenge.