Abstract

We present a theoretical investigation of quantum-transport phenomena in semiconductor nanostructures. In particular, a generalization to "open systems" of the well-known Semiconductor Bloch equations is proposed. Com­pared to the conventional Bloch theory, the presence of spatial boundary conditions manifest itself through self-energy corrections and additional source terms in the ki­netic equations, which are solved by means of a general­ized Monte Carlo simulation. The proposed numerical ap­proach is applied to the study of quantum-transport phe­nomena in double-barrier resonant tunneling diodes and to the scattering-induced suppression of Bloch oscillations in serniconductor superlattices.