Plasma instability and amplification of electromagnetic waves in low-dimensional electron systems

A general electrodynamic theory of a grating coupled two dimensional electron system (2DES) is developed. The 2DES is treated quantum mechanically, the grating is considered as a periodic system of thin metal strips or as an array of quantum wires, and the interaction of collective (plasma) excitations in the system with electromagnetic field is treated within the classical electrodynamics. It is assumed that a dc current flows in the 2DES. We consider a propagation of an electromagnetic wave through the structure, and obtain analytic dependencies of the transmission, reflection, absorption and emission coefficients on the frequency of light, drift velocity of 2D electrons, and other physical and geometrical parameters of the system. If the drift velocity of 2D electrons exceeds a threshold value, a current-driven plasma instability is developed in the system, and an incident far infrared radiation is amplified. We show that in the structure with a quantum wire grating the threshold velocity of the amplification can be essentially reduced, as compared to the commonly employed metal grating, down to experimentally achievable values. Physically this is due to a considerable enhancement of the grating coupler efficiency because of the resonant interaction of plasma modes in the 2DES and in the grating. We show that tunable far infrared emitters, amplifiers and generators can thus be created at realistic parameters of modern semiconductor heterostructures.Comment: 28 pages, 15 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Control of absolute negative mobility via noise recycling procedure

Absolute negative mobility (ANM) is investigated in a spatially-periodic symmetric system under the influence of noise consisting of the superposition of a white Gaussian noise with the same noise delayed by time τ. The effects of the noise intensity σ, the time delay τ and feedback intensity ϵ in the noise recycling are discussed. It is found that the noise intensity σ and time delay τ can induce the phenomenon of ANM, while the feedback intensity ϵ can not induce it. This phenomenon of ANM can be tested in the setup consisting of a resistively and capacitively shunted Josephson junction device by using a vertical cavity surface emitting laser to generate the noise recycling procedure