Magnetoacoustic Effects in Nondegenerate Semiconductors

Abstract

A self-consistent, semiclassical treatment is given for the attenuation of a sound wave in a nondegenerate impurity semiconductor with spherical energy bands, using the formalism developed by Cohen, Harrison, and Harrison. A treatment is given for propagation both parallel and perpendicular to the magnetic field and the behavior of the attenuation is examined for a wide range of frequencies, magnetic fields, and mean free paths. The phenomena studied include saturation with frequency in longitudinal magnetic fields, and cyclotron resonance and magnetoplasma effects in transverse magnetic fields. A magnetoplasma resonance for the transverse polarized waves in a longitudinal magnetic field has been discovered and has been identified with a resonance calculated by Cohen, Harrison, and Harrison. A qualitative physical interpretation of the various effects found in the detailed calculations is also presented.