Photoluminescence of electron-hole plasma in semi-insulating undoped GaAs

The dependence of the photoluminescence spectrum of electron-hole plasma in semi-insulating undoped GaAs on the concentration of the background carbon impurity N_C(3×10¹⁵ cm^?3≤N_C≤4×10¹⁶ cm^?3) is studied at 77 K. It is established that the density of the electron-hole plasma, which is equal to n _e?h ≈1.1×10¹⁶ cm^?3 in crystals with the lowest impurity concentration at an excitation intensity of 6×10²² photons/(cm² s), decreases considerably as the value of N_C increases in the range mentioned above. A decrease in the density of the electron-hole plasma with increasing N_C is attributed to the effect of fluctuations in the carbon concentration N_C, which give rise to a nonuniform distribution of interacting charge carriers and to localization of holes in the tails of the density of states of the valence band.