Solitary acoustic pulses in quantum semiconductor plasmas

We report properties of solitary acoustic pulses that propagate in electron-hole quantum semiconductor plasmas. We show that the dynamics of nonlinear acoustic pulses is governed by the Korteweg-de Vries equation, which includes contributions of the electron and hole quantum recoil effects, quantum statistical pressures of the plasma species, as well as exchange and correlation effects. Typical values for GaAs, GaSb, GaN, and InP semiconductors are used to estimate the speed and profiles of solitary acoustic pulses. The nonlinear solitary pulses depict intrinsic localization of electrostatic wave energies in semiconductor plasmas. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.