Coulomb effects in an optically excited electron-hole plasma of a disordered semiconductor

Abstract

In this paper we extend the work of Altshuler and Aronov [1] on the effect of Coulomb interaction in disordered metals to the case of an optically generated quasi-equilibrium electron-hole plasma in a disordered semiconductor in view of its possible implications for nonlinear optics. The nonlinearity considered here arises through the optically excited plasma density. The plasma is bipolar and not necessarily degenerate as in the metallic case. The density of states and the optical spectra due to freecarrier interband transitions are numerically computed in the presence and in the absence of the Altshuler-Aronov Coulomb-disorder singularity.