Determination of Charge Accumulation and Its Characteristic Time in Double-Barrier Resonant Tunneling Structures Using Steady-State Photoluminescence

Abstract

The steady-state density of electrons accumulated in the well of a GaAs/AlGaAs double-barrier resonant tunneling structure is optically determined as a function of applied voltage by monitoring of the integrated area under the photoluminescence signal from the confined GaAs well. The characteristic time, \ensuremath{\ge} 350 ps, obtained as the quotient of the areal charge and current densities, is consistent with calculations of the intrinsic lifetime of the resonant state, independent of intrasubband scattering processes.