We calculate the intersubband absorption linewidth in quantum wells (QWs) due
to scattering by interface roughness, LO phonons, LA phonons, alloy disorder,
and ionized impurities, and compare it with the transport energy broadening
that corresponds to the transport relaxation time related to electron mobility.
Numerical calculations for GaAs QWs clarify the different contributions of each
individual scattering mechanism to absorption linewidth and transport
broadening. Interface roughness scattering contributes about an order of
magnitude more to linewidth than to transport broadening, because the
contribution from the intrasubband scattering in the first excited subband is
much larger than that in the ground subband. On the other hand, LO phonon
scattering (at room temperature) and ionized impurity scattering contribute
much less to linewidth than to transport broadening. LA phonon scattering makes
comparable contributions to linewidth and transport broadening, and so does
alloy disorder scattering. The combination of these contributions with
significantly different characteristics makes the absolute values of linewidth
and transport broadening very different, and leads to the apparent lack of
correlation between them when a parameter, such as temperature or alloy
composition, is changed. Our numerical calculations can quantitatively explain
the previously reported experimental results.Comment: 17 pages, including 15 figure