Quantum transport and phonon emission of nonequilibrium hot electrons

Abstract

Experimental evidence and analysis is presented which suggests that a current stream of tunneling electrons, even after suffering inelastic collisions, is able to transmit coherently through potential-barrier structures. This interpretation leads to the conclusion that coherent transmission is a single-particle interference property, and that the popular Fabry-Pérot approach to coherent tunneling might be inappropriate. We use the single-particle interference property of the tunneling electrons to probe the hot-electron energy distribution, and observe experimentally multiple-phonon replicas, which are in remarkable agreement with the result of Monte Carlo simulations performed by Baranger et al. for similar structures.