Magnitude-tunable sub-THz shear phonons in a non-polar GaN multiple-quantum-well p-i-n diode

Abstract

Coherent transverse acoustic phonons are optically generated and detected through the piezoelectric coupling between the build-in electric fields and shear strains of a non-polar GaN multiple quantum wells embedded in a p-n junction. By optical transient transmission change measurement, the phonon frequency is observed to be 0.4 THz which corresponds to a wavelength of 12.5 nm, the periodicity of the multiple quantum wells, and the estimated phonon velocity corresponds to the transverse acoustic phonon velocity in GaN. Moreover, we can magnify the driving amplitude of the generated shear phonons by increasing the reverse bias of the p-i-n diode. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4718524]