Calculation of the temperature dependence of hot electron scattering in heavily p-doped GaAs using a high-temperature approximation to the dielectric function

Using a high-temperature approximation to the dielectric function within the random phase approximation, we calculate hot electron scattering rates, as a function of temperature and doping density, in p-doped GaAs. The dielectric function of the holes contains contributions from intraband excitations and interband excitations. The former reduces to an analytic form within the two pole approximation (which used Boltzmann statistics), whereas the latter was calculated numerically. The collective excitation mode of the holes was defined by intraband excitations, since at very small wavevectors, the interband excitations vanish. However, at low temperature the interband excitations were found to be the dominant Landau damping mechanism, which strongly suppressed the plasmon at moderate doping levels. At high temperature the excitations from the heavy to light band were partially suppressed, and the plasmon was not overwhelmingly Landau damped by either interband or intraband excitations. At room temperature, an analytic dielectric function where the interband excitations have been neglected, may be used to accurately calculate hot electron mean free paths. This approximation was found to become more accurate with lower doping levels, but was not appropriate at low temperature. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.