In: Physics
Use conservation of energy and momentum to show that light can excite optical phonons but not acoustic phonons. Give an estimate of the value of k and the energy at which such an excitation can occur.
Let us consider a photon of the energy 100 meV for which the
momentum will come out to be approximately
. At a value of momentum equivalent to this the acoustic phonon
will be approximately 0.004 meV and therefore the photon can't be
absorbed by this optical phonon. If we make a plot of the relations
for dispersion and portray photons of light, optical phonons and
acoustic ones it would be something like the one below.
Now, here we see that the line poltted for light is intersecting
with only optical mode of phonons and not the acoustic ones. The
acoustic phonons have dispersion relation that looks like in
equation form where c is the speed of light. While for the optical
ones the relation is different and is governed by
when and as
.