Potential Barrier Height Effects on the Intrasubband and Intersubband Quasi-One-Dimensional Plasmons

Abstract

The effects of the potential barrier height on the collective excitations of a electron gas confined in a GaAs-AlxGa1-xAs quantum wire of rectangular cross-section are investigated theoretically. For several potential barrier heights, we calculated the plasmon energy, structure factor and pair-correlation function, within the Random-Phase Approximation regime, considering a three-subband model with only the lowest subband populated by electrons. We verified that the intersubband plasmon is more sensitive to the potential barrier height variation than the intrasubband plasmon. We also observed that the confining potential effect decreases with the increasing of the wire-width.