Computational physics of semiconductor superlattices

In this thesis we perform numerical analysis of semiconductor superlattices with the goal of aiding research and experimental work in use of superlattices in terahertz electromagnetic signal detection and emission. We use semi-classical (i.e. Boltzmann Transport Equation) approach to solving electron dynamics in superlattices. Due to inherent symmetries of the problem we are able to partition numerical solution along different axis of superlattice into Fourier components and direct differencing scheme. Detailed numerical scheme is developed and parallel implementation on GPU (CUDA) is analysed showing great improvement over conventional methods. In results of numerical simulations we show that under certain configuration of external electric and magnetic fields signal amplification and therefore generation can occur. We also analyse different temperatures showing how signal amplification regime degrades and eventually disappears with increasing temperature.