Surface Loving and Surface Avoiding modes

Nicolas Combe (1) , Jean Roch Huntzinger (2) , Joseph Morillo (1)

1 CEMES - Centre d'élaboration de matériaux et d'études structurales
2 GES - Groupe d'étude des semiconducteurs

We theoretically study the propagation of sound waves in GaAs/AlAs superlattices focussing on periodic modes in the vicinity of the band gaps. Based on analytical and numerical calculations, we show that these modes are the product of a quickly oscillating function times a slowly varying envelope function. We carefully study the phase of the envelope function compared to the surface of a semi-infinite superlattice. Especially, the dephasing of the superlattice compared to its surface is a key parameter. We exhibit two kind of modes: Surface Avoiding and Surface Loving Modes whose envelope functions have their minima and respectively maxima in the vicinity of the surface. We finally consider the observability of such modes. While Surface avoiding modes have experimentally been observed (Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 1224301 (2006)), we show that Surface Loving Modes are likely to be observable and we discuss the achievement of such experiments. The proposed approach could be easily transposed to other types of wave propagation in unidimensional semi-infinite periodic structures as photonic Bragg mirror.

Mots clés: superlattices; vibrations modes; surface

Domaines: Vibrations [physics.class-ph]; Vibrations [physics.class-ph]; Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

Nicolas Combe, Jean Roch Huntzinger, Joseph Morillo. Surface Loving and Surface Avoiding modes. The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, 2009, 68, pp.47-58. ⟨10.1140/epjb/e2009-00061-3⟩. ⟨hal-00346930⟩