Phonon-assisted absorption in crossed electric and magnetic fields in direct-band semiconductors. II
In polar semiconductors with direct energy gaps, optical absorption is observed for photons with energies well below that corresponding to the energy gap. It is now established that the absorption tail (Urbach's law) is due to indirect phonon-assisted optical transitions involving the absorption of one or more optical phonons of energy kΘ. In the present paper we have considered the effect of crossed electric and magnetic fields on the optical absorption in that region of the Urbach tail where second order processes are dominant. The experimentally favorable situation involving a weak electric field is investigated. A new perturbation expansion in terms of a dimensionless parameter is developed in this connection and is used to obtain the weak electric field limit. Such a study may be useful in exploring the Landau level structure of the valence and conduction bands separately.