Tunable oscillatory modes of electric-field domains in doped semiconductor superlattices are reported. The experimental investigations demonstrate the realization of tunable, GHz frequencies in GaAs-AlAs superlattices covering the temperature region from 5 to 300 K. The orgin of the tunable oscillatory modes is determined using an analytical and a numerical modeling of the dynamics of domain formation. Three different oscillatory modes are found. Their presence depends on the actual shape of the drift velocity curve, the doping density, the boundary condition, and the length of the superlattice. For most bias regions, the self-sustained oscillations are due to the formation, motion, and recycling of the domain boundary inside the superlattice. For some biases, the strengths of the low and high field domain change periodically in time with the domain boundary being pinned within a few quantum wells. The dependency of the frequency on the coupling leads to the prediction of a new type of tunable GHz oscillator based on semiconductor superlattices.Comment: Tex file (20 pages) and 16 postscript figure

Abstract. We introduce a new approach for narrow band array imaging of localized scatterers from intensity-only measurements by considering the possibility of reconstructing the positions and reflectivities of the scatterers exactly from only partial knowledge of the array data, since we assume that phase information is not available. We reformulate this intensity-only imaging problem as a non-convex optimization problem and show that we can have exact recovery by minimizing the rank of a positive semidefinite matrix associated with the unknown reflectivities. Since this optimization problem is NP-hard and is computationally intractable, we replace the rank of the matrix by its nuclear norm, the sum of its singular values, which is a convex programming problem that can be solved in polynomial time. We show that under certain conditions on the array imaging setup and on the scatterer configuration the minimum nuclear norm solution coincides with the minimum rank solution. Numerical experiments explore the robustness of this approach, which recovers sparse reflectivity vectors exactly as solutions of a convex optimization problem.

We propose a selfconsistent microscopic model of vertical sequential tunneling through a multi-quantum well. The model includes a detailed description of the contacts, uses the Transfer Hamiltonian for expressions of the current and it treats the Coulomb interaction within a mean field approximation. We analyze the current density through a double well and a superlattice and study the formation of electric field domains and multistability coming from the Coulomb interaction. Phase diagrams of parameter regions (bias, doping in the heterostructure and in the contacts, etc) where the different solutions exist are given. 73.40.Gk,73.20.Dx

No abstract

We review the occurrence of electric-field domains in doped superlattices within a discrete drift model. A complete analysis of the construction and stability of stationary field profiles having two domains is carried out. As a consequence, we can provide a simple analytical estimation for the doping density above which stable stable domains occur. This bound may be useful for the design of superlattices exhibiting self-sustained current oscillations. Furthermore we explain why stable domains occur in superlattices in contrast to the usual Gunn diode.