Polaronic Effects in Wurtzite InxGa1-xN/GaN Parabolic Quantum Well

Abstract

The energy levels of polaron in a wurtzite InxGa1-xN/GaN parabolic quantum well are investigated by adopting a modified Lee-Low-Pines variational method. The ground state energy, the transition energy and the contributions of different branches of optical phonon modes to the ground state energy as functions of the well width are given. The effects of the anisotropy of optical phonon modes and the spatial dependence effective mass, dielectric constant, phonon frequency on energy levels are considered in calculation. In order to compare, the corresponding results in zinc-blende parabolic quantum well are given. The results indicate that the contributions of the electron-optical phonon interaction to ground state energy of polaron in InxGa1-xN/GaN is very large, and make the energy of polaron reduces. For a narrower quantum well，the contributions of half-space optical phonon modes is large , while for a wider one, the contributions of the confined optical phonon modes are larger. The ground state energy and the transition energy of polaron in wurtzite InxGa1-xN/GaN are smaller than that of zinc-blende InxGa1-xN/GaN, and the contributions of the electron-optical phonon interaction to ground state energy of polaron in wurtzite InxGa1-xN/GaN are greater than that of zinc-blende InxGa1-xN/GaN. The contributions of the electron-optical phonon interaction to ground state energy of polaron in wurtzite InxGa1-xN/GaN (about from 22 to 32 meV) are greater than that of GaAs/AlxGa1-xAs parabolic quantum well (about from 1.8 to 3.2 meV). Therefore, the electron-optical phonon interaction should be considered for studying electron state in InxGa1-xN/GaN parabolic quantum well.