Well-width dependence of electron-phonon interaction energies in quantum wells due to confined LO phonon modes

In the present paper, four confined LO phonon models have been used to calculate the electron–confined-LO-phonon interaction energy as a function of the well width, and the results are compared with each other. The explicit expression of the interaction energy for each phonon model is obtained within the intermediate-coupling approach. It is shown that the lattice dynamics boundary condition in addition to the electromagnetic boundary condition has only a modest effect on the interaction energy as long as the phonon eigenfunctions are orthonormal and complete. Because the guided model does not satisfy the electromagnetic boundary condition and the Huang-Zhu model does not satisfy the orthonormal condition, the numerical results of these two models are not in agreement with the other two models.