Hot Electron Shubnikov‐de Haas effect in n‐GaSb

The effect of an electric field on the amplitudes of the Shubnikov‐de Haas (SdH) oscillations of Te‐doped n‐type gallium antimonide has been studied in samples with Fermi energies well below the 〈111〉 satellite minima. Therefore the transport effects were due to carriers in the Γ1‐minimum alone. From the decrease of the SdH‐amplitudes the variation of the electron temperature with electric field up to 15 V/cm has been calculated. The measured energy loss rate of the electrons to the lattice is compared with calculated values assuming scattering of the electrons by acoustic phonons. With a deformation potential constant of Ec = 5 eV the deformation potential scattering gives good agreement with the experimental data between 4.2 and 10 K. Above 10 K another unknown energy loss process becomes effective. A two‐phonon mechanism is proposed to explain the observed increase of the energy loss.