Adiabatic approximation for the dynamics of magnetoexcitons in Cu2O

Abstract

When exciting an electron in a semiconductor from the valence to the conduction band, the missing electron in the valence band can be treated as a positively charged quasi particle, the hole. As a bound state of electron and hole the exciton is the solid state analogon to the hydrogen atom. The most important difference when comparing exctions to hydrogen-like systems is the influence of the band structure in the solid state system. The band structure breaks the full rotational symmetry of the hydrogen-like system leading to additional features in the absorption spectra of cuprous oxide. Absorption spectra for magnetoexcitons in cuprous oxide can be calculated in a quantum mechanical framework with good accordance to the experimental spectra. However those calculations are limited to low principal quantum numbers. On the other hand experimental data is available for higher energies. In the range of the gap energy one can observe quasi-Landau resonances. In atomic physics these features can be explained within a semiclassical theory. This connects properties of classical orbits to the observed absorption spectra. This thesis aims to lay down the foundations for the calculation of classical orbits for magentoexcitons in cuprous oxide as well as their parameters to provide the tools to apply semiclassical theory.