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The search for Bose–Einstein condensation of excitons in Cu2O: exciton-Auger recombination versus biexciton formation

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The search for Bose–Einstein condensation of excitons in Cu2O: exciton-Auger recombination versus biexciton formation
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49
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CC Attribution 3.0 Unported:
You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
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Release Date2014
LanguageEnglish

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Abstract
Excitons in high-purity crystals of Cu2O undergo a density-dependent lifetime that opposes Bose–Einstein condensation (BEC). This rapid decay rate of excitons at a density n has generally been attributed to Auger recombination having the form , where A is an exciton-Auger constant. Various measurements of A, however, have reported values that are orders-of-magnitude larger than the existing theory. In response to this conundrum, recent work has suggested that excitons bind into excitonic molecules, or biexcitons, which are short-lived and expected to be optically inactive. Of particular interest is the case of excitons confined to a parabolic strain well—a method that has recently achieved exciton densities approaching BEC. In this paper we report time- and space-resolved luminescence data that supports the existence of short-lived biexcitons in a strain well, implying an exciton loss rate of the form with a biexciton capture coefficient C(T) proportional to , as predicted by basic thermodynamics. This alternate theory will be considered in relation to recent experiments on the subject.