Intraband Magneto-Optical Studies of Semiconductors in the Far Infrared. I

This chapter presents intraband magneto-optical studies of semiconductors in the far infrared (FIR). Significant advances in FIR instrumentation have made possible the detailed investigation of a wealth of intraband phenomena with an attendant increase in the information and understanding of the quantum electron states and their interactions. A brief description of the macroscopic optical properties of solids is presented. For a continuous isotropic medium characterized by a real conductivity and a real dielectric constant, the wave equation obtained from Maxwell's equations in irrationalized Gaussian units is presented. The radiation field could also be quantized and written in terms of creation and annihilation operators for photons. The result for the transition rate between unperturbed levels of the system of charged particles is the same in both cases. It is found that the inclusion of an external magnetic field presents some difficulty because the unperturbed wavefunctions extend throughout the crystal. It is found that the FIR magneto-optical techniques have been particularly successful when applied to the study of zone-centered electrons in zinc blende semiconductors.