Numerical tools for the study of instabilities within the positive-differential-resistance regions of tunneling devices

This paper presents theoretical results on instability processes that occur in the positive-differential-resistance region of nanoscale tunneling structures and reports on efforts to development advanced numerical techniques for use in future optimization studies. These results were obtained from numerical implementations of the Wigner-Poisson electron transport model. Here, the primary focus of the reported research is on developing simulation methods that are adaptive to parallel-computing platforms. Together, these investigations demonstrate the high computational demands associated with modeling fully time-dependent phenomenon in resonant tunneling structures (RTS) and offer new numerical solutions for the rapid and efficient analysis of these types of problems. Furthermore, the simulation tools under development will enable future investigations into new quantum phenomenon that strongly influence instability processes in RTSs.