Density Matrix Methods for Semiconductor Coulomb Dynamics.pdfVIP

— — Density Matrix Methods for Semiconductor Coulomb Dynamics JAMES W. DUFTY,1 CHANG SUB KIM,2 MICHAEL BONITZ,3 ROLF BINDER4 1Department of Physics, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611 2 Department of Physics, Chonnam National University, Kwangju 500-757, South Korea 3 Universitat Rostock, Fachbereich Physik, Universitatsplatz 3, Rostock 18051, Germany ¨ ¨ 4 Optical Sciences Center, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721 Received 29 March 1997; revised 28 April 1997; accepted 8 May 1997 ABSTRACT: Current experiments on semiconductor devices using femtosecond lasers provide new theoretical challenges for the description of charge carrier dynamics. Among the new features of such experiments are states driven very far from equilibrium and probes on time scales short compared to scattering and other characteristic material relaxation times. Standard many-body methods must be modified and extended to accommodate these features. We propose that the quantum hierarchy for reduced density operators is an ideal formulation of such initial value problems and describe how the dominant effects of exchange and charge correlations can be accounted for in a simple and physically transparent closure of the hierarchy of equations. The transformations, approximations, and interpretation can be accom