Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 836–839 (1999)Inelastic Quantum Transport in Superlattices: Success and Failure of the Boltzmann EquationReceived 16 February 1999; published in the issue dated 26 July 1999 Electrical transport in semiconductor superlattices is studied within a fully self-consistent quantum transport model based on nonequilibrium Green functions, including phonon and impurity scattering. We compute both the drift-velocity-field relation and the momentum distribution function covering the whole field range from linear response to negative differential conductivity. The quantum results are compared with the respective results obtained from a Monte Carlo solution of the Boltzmann equation. Our analysis thus sets the limits of validity for the semiclassical theory in a nonlinear transport situation in the presence of inelastic scattering. © 1999 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.83.836
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.83.836
PACS:
73.61.-r, 72.10.-d, 72.20.Ht
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