TUNNELING RELAXATION OF HOLES IN DOUBLE-QUANTUM WELLS WITH NONIDEAL HETEROBOUNDARIES

This paper presents a calculation of the tunneling relaxation rate of holes in double quantum wells when the holes are scattered at heterobo undary roughnesses. Because of mixing of the light-and heavy-hole stat es (which are described analytically in the approximation of strongly differing effective masses), the interwell tunneling mechanism changes as the splitting energy of the tunnel-coupled levels increases. The d ependence of the tunneling relaxation rate on the splitting energy is compared with the experimental results. (C) 1995 American Institute of Physics.