Polarization analysis of hot-carrier light emission in silicon

In this paper a theoretical-evaluation is given of the absolute intensity and polarization of light emission from silicon devices due to conduction-conduction (c-c) and valence-valence (v-v) direct transitions. The matrix elements of the momentum operator between Bloch states have been obtained from a full band-structure calculation performed with the pseudopotential method. Results have been obtained by using both analytical model distribution functions and realistic hot-carrier distributions obtained from Monte Carlo (MC) simulations based on the same band model. They show a polarization degree of a few per cent, which should be observable for these transitions.