Anomalous dephasing of bosonic excitons interacting with phonons in the vicinity of the Bose-Einstein condensation

The dephasing and relaxation kinetics of bosonic excitons interacting with a thermal bath of acoustic phonons is studied after coherent pulse excitation. The kinetics of the induced excitonic polarization is calculated within Markovian equations both for subcritical and supercritical excitation with respect to a Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). For excited densities n below the critical density n_c, an exponential polarization decay is obtained, which is characterized by a dephasing rate G=1/T_2. This dephasing rate due to phonon scattering shows a pronounced exciton-density dependence in the vicinity of the phase transition. It is well described by the power law G (n-n_c)^2 that can be understood by linearization of the equations around the equilibrium solution. Above the critical density we get a non-exponential relaxation to the final condensate value p^0 with |p(t)|-|p^0| ~1/t that holds for all densities. Furthermore we include the full self-consistent Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) terms due to the exciton-exciton interaction and the kinetics of the anomalous functions F_k= . The collision terms are analyzed and an approximation is used which is consistent with the existence of BEC. The inclusion of the coherent x-x interaction does not change the dephasing laws. The anomalous function F_k exhibits a clear threshold behaviour at the critical density.Comment: European Physical Journal B (in print

Size-dependent decoherence of excitonic states in semiconductor microcrystallites

The size-dependent decoherence of the exciton states resulting from the spontaneous emission is investigated in a semiconductor spherical microcrystallite under condition $a_{B}\ll R_{0}\leq\lambda$. In general, the larger size of the microcrystallite corresponds to the shorter coherence time. If the initial state is a superposition of two different excitonic coherent states, the coherence time depends on both the overlap of two excitonic coherent states and the size of the microcrystallite. When the system with fixed size is initially in the even or odd coherent states, the larger average number of the excitons corresponds to the faster decoherence. When the average number of the excitons is given, the bigger size of the microcrystallite corresponds to the faster decoherence. The decoherence of the exciton states for the materials GaAs and CdS is numerically studied by our theoretical analysis.Comment: 4 pages, two figure

Ultrafast Relaxation of Photoexcited Carriers: The Role of Coherence in the Generation Process

A self-consistent description of the ultrafast dynamics of photoexcited carriers in semiconductors based on a generalized Monte Carlo solution of the semiconductor Bloch equations is presented. The problem of photogeneration and its theoretical description are discussed. We show that some of the approaches commonly used fail in describing correctly the effect of carrier-carrier interaction in the low-density limit. By including terms which have the structure of ‘‘in-scattering'' terms (vertex corrections) for the interband polarization, the experimentally observed features in the carrier dynamics are well described in the whole density range

Center-of-Mass Properties of the Exciton in Quantum Wells

We present high-quality numerical calculations of the exciton center-of-mass dispersion for GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells of widths in the range 2-20 nm. The k.p-coupling of the heavy- and light-hole bands is fully taken into account. An optimized center-of-mass transformation enhances numerical convergence. We derive an easy-to-use semi-analytical expression for the exciton groundstate mass from an ansatz for the exciton wavefunction at finite momentum. It is checked against the numerical results and found to give very good results. We also show multiband calculations of the exciton groundstate dispersion using a finite-differences scheme in real space, which can be applied to rather general heterostructures.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figures included, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Quantum kinetics and thermalization in a particle bath model

We study the dynamics of relaxation and thermalization in an exactly solvable model of a particle interacting with a harmonic oscillator bath. Our goal is to understand the effects of non-Markovian processes on the relaxational dynamics and to compare the exact evolution of the distribution function with approximate Markovian and Non-Markovian quantum kinetics. There are two different cases that are studied in detail: i) a quasiparticle (resonance) when the renormalized frequency of the particle is above the frequency threshold of the bath and ii) a stable renormalized `particle' state below this threshold. The time evolution of the occupation number for the particle is evaluated exactly using different approaches that yield to complementary insights. The exact solution allows us to investigate the concept of the formation time of a quasiparticle and to study the difference between the relaxation of the distribution of bare particles and that of quasiparticles. We derive a non-Markovian quantum kinetic equation which resums the perturbative series and includes off-shell effects. A Markovian approximation that includes off-shell contributions and the usual Boltzmann equation (energy conserving) are obtained from the quantum kinetic equation in the limit of wide separation of time scales upon different coarse-graining assumptions. The relaxational dynamics predicted by the non-Markovian, Markovian and Boltzmann approximations are compared to the exact result. The Boltzmann approach is seen to fail in the case of wide resonances and when threshold and renormalization effects are important.Comment: 39 pages, RevTex, 14 figures (13 eps figures

Theory of exciton-exciton correlation in nonlinear optical response

We present a systematic theory of Coulomb interaction effects in the nonlinear optical processes in semiconductors using a perturbation series in the exciting laser field. The third-order dynamical response consists of phase-space filling correction, mean-field exciton-exciton interaction, and two-exciton correlation effects expressed as a force-force correlation function. The theory provides a unified description of effects of bound and unbound biexcitons, including memory-effects beyond the Markovian approximation. Approximations for the correlation function are presented.Comment: RevTex, 35 pages, 10 PostScript figs, shorter version submitted to Physical Review

Microscopic theory of the intracollisional field effect in semiconductor superlattices

A detailed analysis of the optical and transport properties of semiconductor superlattices in the high-field regime is presented. Electronic Bloch oscillations and the resulting terahertz emission signals are computed including phonon damping in the presence of the electric field. The modifications of the phonon-induced terahertz signal decay are analyzed including the movement of the carriers in the field (intracollisional field effect). For elevated fields it is shown that the interplay between electric field and electron-phonon interaction leads to resonance structures in the terahertz damping rate

Real-time Relaxation and Kinetics in Hot Scalar QED: Landau Damping

The real time evolution of field condensates with soft length scales k^{-1}>(eT)^{-1} is solved in hot scalar electrodynamics, with a view towards understanding relaxational phenomena in the QGP and the electroweak plasma. We find that transverse gauge invariant non-equilibrium expectation values of fields relax via {\em power laws} to asymptotic amplitudes that are determined by the quasiparticle poles. The long time relaxational dynamics and relevant time scales are determined by the behaviour of the retarded self-energy not at the small frequencies, but at the Landau damping thresholds. This explains the presence of power laws and not of exponential decay. Furthermore, we derive the influence functional, the Langevin equation and the fluctuation-dissipation theorem for the soft modes, identifying the correlation functions that emerge in the classical limit. We show that a Markovian approximation fails to describe the dynamics {\em both} at short and long times. We also introduce a novel kinetic approach that goes beyond the standard Boltzmann equation and incorporates off-shell processes and find that the distribution function for soft quasiparticles relaxes with a power law through Landau damping. We also find an unusual dressing dynamics of bare particles and anomalous (logarithmic) relaxation of hard quasiparticles.Comment: 41 pages, 5 figures, uses revtex, replaced with version to appear in Phys. Rev.

The United States COVID-19 Forecast Hub dataset

Academic researchers, government agencies, industry groups, and individuals have produced forecasts at an unprecedented scale during the COVID-19 pandemic. To leverage these forecasts, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) partnered with an academic research lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to create the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub. Launched in April 2020, the Forecast Hub is a dataset with point and probabilistic forecasts of incident cases, incident hospitalizations, incident deaths, and cumulative deaths due to COVID-19 at county, state, and national, levels in the United States. Included forecasts represent a variety of modeling approaches, data sources, and assumptions regarding the spread of COVID-19. The goal of this dataset is to establish a standardized and comparable set of short-term forecasts from modeling teams. These data can be used to develop ensemble models, communicate forecasts to the public, create visualizations, compare models, and inform policies regarding COVID-19 mitigation. These open-source data are available via download from GitHub, through an online API, and through R packages