Ultrafast carrier relaxation in GaN, In_(0.05)Ga_(0.95)N and an In_(0.05)Ga_(0.95)/In_(0.15)Ga_(0.85)N Multiple Quantum Well

Room temperature, wavelength non-degenerate ultrafast pump/probe measurements were performed on GaN and InGaN epilayers and an InGaN multiple quantum well structure. Carrier relaxation dynamics were investigated as a function of excitation wavelength and intensity. Spectrally-resolved sub-picosecond relaxation due to carrier redistribution and QW capture was found to depend sensitively on the wavelength of pump excitation. Moreover, for pump intensities above a threshold of 100 microJ/cm2, all samples demonstrated an additional emission feature arising from stimulated emission (SE). SE is evidenced as accelerated relaxation (< 10 ps) in the pump-probe data, fundamentally altering the re-distribution of carriers. Once SE and carrier redistribution is completed, a slower relaxation of up to 1 ns for GaN and InGaN epilayers, and 660 ps for the MQW sample, indicates carrier recombination through spontaneous emission.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev.

A Low-Symmetry Cubic Mesophase of Dendronized CdS Nanoparticles and Their Structure-Dependent Photoluminescence

A liquid crystal (LC) phase with P213 symmetry, the lowest so far in a cubic LC, was obtained in a system of CdS quantum dots (QDs) modified with a two-layer corona of aliphatic thiols (inner) and LC aromatic dendrons (outer). We propose that the unusual low symmetry of this cubic mesophase is a result of the multi-layered corona, which prefers to adopt an anisotropic radial profile because of the combination of long and short “bristles.” The anisotropic distribution of dendrons (long bristles) in the P213 phase is thought to facilitate π-π interaction among the aromatic moieties. The interaction gives rise to non-radiative exciton energy-transfer pathways that induce photoluminescence quenching of the CdS QDs. This is believed to be the first example of structure-dependent emission-quenching behavior

Theory of coherent acoustic phonons in InGaN/GaN multi-quantum wells

A microscopic theory for the generation and propagation of coherent LA phonons in pseudomorphically strained wurzite (0001) InGaN/GaN multi-quantum well (MQW) p-i-n diodes is presented. The generation of coherent LA phonons is driven by photoexcitation of electron-hole pairs by an ultrafast Gaussian pump laser and is treated theoretically using the density matrix formalism. We use realistic wurzite bandstructures taking valence-band mixing and strain-induced piezo- electric fields into account. In addition, the many-body Coulomb ineraction is treated in the screened time-dependent Hartree-Fock approximation. We find that under typical experimental conditions, our microscopic theory can be simplified and mapped onto a loaded string problem which can be easily solved.Comment: 20 pages, 17 figure