On a simplified analysis of the carrier contribution to the elastic constants in semiconductor superlattices in the presence of crossed electric and quantizing magnetic fields

An attempt is made to study the carrier contribution to the elastic constants in semiconductor superlattices and the constituent materials under cross-field configuration in the presence of spin and broadening. It is found, taking Ga1-xAlxAs/AlAs superlattice as an example that the said contribution increases with increasing carrier degeneracy, oscillates with the reciprocal quantizing magnetic field and the cross-field configuration enhances the numerical values. The carrier contribution to the second and third order elastic constants in semiconductor superlattices is larger as compared to the constituent materials. An experimental method is suggested for determining the carrier contribution to the elastic constants in degenerate materials having arbitrary dispersion laws. In addition, the corresponding well-known results for degenerate wide gap materials in the absence of any fields are also obtained from the generalized expressions under certain limiting conditions. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd