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Maxwell’s Equations, Photons and the Density of States

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Semiconductor Optics

Part of the book series: Graduate Texts in Physics ((GTP))

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Abstract

In this chapter we consider Maxwells equations and what they reveal about the propagation of light in vacuum and in matter. We introduce the concept of photons and present their density of states. Since the density of states is a rather important property in general and not only for photons, we approach this quantity in a rather general way. We will use the density of states later also for other (quasi-) particles including systems of reduced dimensionality. In addition, we introduce the occupation probability of these states for various groups of particles.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Some authors prefer to use \({\bf{M}}^{{\prime}} =\bf{ M}{\mu }_{0}^{-1}\) and thus \(\bf{B} = {\mu }_{0}(\bf{H} +{ \bf{M}}^{{\prime}})\). We prefer (2.1e, f) for symmetry arguments [93R1].

  2. 2.

    A constant term in this power expansion such as \(\bf{P} =\bf{ {P}}_{0} + \chi E\) would describe a spontaneous polarization of matter which occurs e.g., in pyro- or ferro-electric materials. With arguments similar to the ones given for ferromagnetics we can neglect such phenomena in the discussion of the optical properties of semiconductors.

  3. 3.

    The letter ϕ has been already used for the electrostatic potential e.g., in (2.50). Since there are more different physical quantities than letters of the alphabet, we sometimes use the same letter for different quantities, but from the context it should be clear what is meant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Angewandte Physik, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany

    Professor Claus F. Klingshirn

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  1. Professor Claus F. Klingshirn
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Klingshirn, C.F. (2012). Maxwell’s Equations, Photons and the Density of States. In: Semiconductor Optics. Graduate Texts in Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28362-8_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28362-8_2

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