English

Energy relaxation and thermalization of hot electrons in quantum wires

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2010-11-25 v1

Abstract

We develop a theory of energy relaxation and thermalization of hot carriers in real quantum wires. Our theory is based on a controlled perturbative approach for large excitation energies and emphasizes the important roles of the electron spin and finite temperature. Unlike in higher dimensions, relaxation in one-dimensional electron liquids requires three-body collisions and is much faster for particles than holes which relax at nonzero temperatures only. Moreover, co-moving carriers thermalize more rapidly than counterpropagating carriers. Our results are quantitatively consistent with a recent experiment.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1007.1152,
  title  = {Energy relaxation and thermalization of hot electrons in quantum wires},
  author = {Torsten Karzig and Leonid I. Glazman and Felix von Oppen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1007.1152},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

5 pages, 1 figure