THE INTERACTION OF ELECTRONS WITH OPTICAL PHONONS IN EMBEDDED CIRCULAR AND ELLIPTIC GAAS QUANTUM WIRES

We consider electronic intrasubband transitions involving the confined and interface optical phonons of circular and elliptical GaAs quantum wires. Detailed treatments are given for a GaAs wire embedded in AIAs where the electrons are confined via an infinite potential barrier. T he optical phonons are described using the dielectric continuum (DC) m odel, which for the GaAs/AIAs system compares favourably with more sop histicated macroscopic models and ab initio microscopic calculations i n its prediction for the total scattering rates. The DC model has been applied previously to the circular case, but here we evaluate the rat es analytically. It is shown that the behaviour of the electrons and p honons in elliptical wires is both quantitatively and qualitatively di fferent from that in circular wires, especially as regards angular pro perties.