Cooling of hot carriers in highly photoexcited semiconductors

Abstract

The rate of energy loss of high-density hot electrons and holes in highly photoexcited plasma in direct-gap polar semiconductors is investigated. We compare the efficiency of the several relaxation channels, and show the relevant role played by the TO phonons. Further, we reconfirm that the rapid mutual thermalization of carriers and LO phonons produces a long plateau in the evolution curve for the carrier's effective temperature. GaAs was selected for numerical computations.