Reflection of light and heavy holes from a linear potential barrier

Abstract

In this paper, we study reflection of holes in direct-band semiconductors from a linear potential barrier. It is shown that the light-hole–heavy-hole transformation matrix depends only on the dimensionless product of the light-hole longitudinal momentum and the characteristic length determined by the slope of the potential and it does not depend on the ratio of light- and heavy-hole masses, provided this ratio is small. This coefficient is shown to vanish both in the limit of small and large longitudinal momenta, however the phase of a reflected hole is different in these limits. An approximate analytical expression for the light-hole–heavy-hole transformation coefficient is found.