Howard E. Jackson

Transient Rayleigh scattering from single semiconductor nanowires

Transient Rayleigh scattering spectroscopy is a new pump-probe technique to study the dynamics and cooling of photo-excited carriers in single semiconductor nanowires. By studying the evolution of the transient Rayleigh spectrum in time after excitation, one can measure the time evolution of the density and temperature of photo-excited electron-hole plasma (EHP) as they equilibrate with lattice. This provides detailed information of dynamics and cooling of carriers including linear and bimolecular recombination properties, carrier transport characteristics, and the energy-loss rate of hot electron-hole plasma through the emission of LO and acoustic phonons.