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Dissipative transport in superlattices within the Wigner function formalism

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Abstract

We employ the Wigner function formalism to simulate partially coherent, dissipative electron transport in biased semiconductor superlattices. We introduce a model collision integral with terms that describe energy dissipation, momentum relaxation, and the decay of spatial coherences (localization). Based on a particle-based solution to the Wigner transport equation with the model collision integral, we simulate quantum electronic transport at 10 K in a GaAs/AlGaAs superlattice and accurately reproduce its current density vs field characteristics obtained in experiment.

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Notes

  1. This case is to be contrasted with the optical limit, in which a system is assumed only weakly coupled with the environment and energy levels spaced so far apart that the secular or rotating wave approximation (RWA) can be emplyed. While tenuous in current-carrying nanostructures, the weak approximation and RWA are nonetheless often applied to derive master equations in quantum transport [39].

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge support by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering under Award DE-SC0008712. The work was performed using the resources of the UW-Madison Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC).

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  1. University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    O. Jonasson & I. Knezevic

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  1. O. Jonasson
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  2. I. Knezevic
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Correspondence to O. Jonasson.

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Jonasson, O., Knezevic, I. Dissipative transport in superlattices within the Wigner function formalism. J Comput Electron 14, 879–887 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10825-015-0734-9

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