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Energy relaxation and thermalization of hot electrons in quantum wires
Torsten Karzig1, Leonid I Glazman, Felix von Oppen
1Dahlem Center for Complex Quantum Systems and Fachbereich Physik, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
Abstract:
We develop a theory of energy relaxation and thermalization of hot carriers in clean 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, comoving carriers thermalize more rapidly than counterpropagating carriers. Our results are quantitatively consistent with a recent experiment.
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