Choice of the scattering carrier in Monte Carlo treatments of carrier-carrier scattering

Various techniques for including carrier-carrier scattering in Monte Carlo simulations are discussed. It is shown that the standard technique does not lead to the correct choice of the scattering carrier. A more recent method, however, allows for the correct choice and typically results in over an order of magnitude reduction in CPU time. The error introduced by the standard choice of the scattering carrier is estimated through an investigation of various average quantities per scattering event. Although this error is rather small for the simple cases presented here, there are indications that it will be significant in more sophisticated treatments of carrier-carrier scattering.