Recombination noise in semiconductor junction devices

Abstract

The evolution of conceptual models of recombination noise generation in bipolar semiconductor junctions is explored with particular reference to recent developments in nonclassical light generation. This development is traced from the early work pioneered by van der Ziel through to recent work on sub-Poissonian light generation initiated by Yamamoto. This recent work has emphasised the importance of the driving impedance in suppressing recombination noise. It has helped to resolve several longstanding ambiguities and misunderstandings concerning the fundamentals of shot noise generation in laser diodes and light-emitting diodes, as well as in bipolar junction diodes and transistors, and allows a common conceptual approach to shot noise generation and propagation in photonic and electronic devices. Surprisingly, it also lends support to early suggestions by van der Ziel, subsequently regarded as erroneous by Buckingham and Faulkner, that bipolar junction shot noise does in fact originate in the transport of minority carriers across the depletion region of macroscopic junctions, although only in the limit of low injection.