Investigation of Transport Modeling for Plasma Waves in THz Devices

The performance of electronic devices for the detection and generation of THz waves might be potentially improved by resonances or instabilities due to plasma waves. The analytical modeling of these devices is based on very simple transport models, of which the accuracy is assessed by a systematic comparison with numerical solutions of the Boltzmann transport equation (BTE). To this end, the BTE is linearized and solved for plasma waves of arbitrary frequency and wave number. The comparison reveals that the simple transport models fail to capture even the most salient aspects of transport in the important frequency/wave number range and better models are required for reliable prediction of the performance of THz devices.