Abstract

In this paper, we consider the feasibility of a bistable cyclotron resonance in semiconductors. The effect is based on the nonparabolicity of the potential well of the conductive band, which results in the dependence of the effective mass of conductive electron on its momentum or energy. This effect is analogous to the hysteretic cyclotron resonance of the free electron in vacuum,¹ which is based on the relativistic mass effect. The novel features of the proposed effect as compared with the free- electron case are; (1) the nonlinearity associated with conductive electrons in semiconductors is by many orders of magnitude larger than the relativistic nonlinearity in the free-electron case, which allows one to attain a fairly low critical pumping intensity, even when the faster relaxation in semiconductors is taken into account; (2) the effective mass of electrons in some semiconductors (e.g., InSb) is very small, which results in a considerable decrease of the required magnetic field; (3) the main effect of cyclotron bistability is accompanied in semiconductors by some small electrostatic potential on the sample walls, which could be measured.

© 1983 Optical Society of America