3 research outputs found
Coulomb scattering lifetime of a two-dimensional electron gas
Motivated by a recent tunneling experiment in a double quantum-well system,
which reports an anomalously enhanced electronic scattering rate in a clean
two-dimensional electron gas, we calculate the inelastic quasiparticle lifetime
due to electron-electron interaction in a single loop dynamically screened
Coulomb interaction within the random-phase-approximation. We obtain excellent
quantitative agreement with the inelastic scattering rates in the tunneling
experiment without any adjustable parameter, finding that the reported large
( a factor of six) disagreement between theory and experiment arises from
quantitative errors in the existing theoretical work and from the off-shell
energy dependence of the electron self-energy.Comment: 11 pages, RevTex, figures included. Also available at
http://www-cmg.physics.umd.edu/~lzheng
Electron-electron scattering in linear transport in two-dimensional systems
We describe a method for numerically incorporating electron--electron
scattering in quantum wells for small deviations of the distribution function
from equilibrium, within the framework of the Boltzmann equation. For a given
temperature and density , a symmetric matrix needs to be evaluated only
once, and henceforth it can be used to describe electron--electron scattering
in any Boltzmann equation linear-response calculation for that particular
and . Using this method, we calculate the distribution function and mobility
for electrons in a quantum-well, including full finite-temperature dynamic
screening effects. We find that at some parameters which we investigated,
electron--electron scattering reduces mobility by approximately 40\%.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures (uuencoded
Inelastic lifetimes of confined two-component electron systems in semiconductor quantum wire and quantum well structures
We calculate Coulomb scattering lifetimes of electrons in two-subband quantum
wires and in double-layer quantum wells by obtaining the quasiparticle
self-energy within the framework of the random-phase approximation for the
dynamical dielectric function. We show that, in contrast to a single-subband
quantum wire, the scattering rate in a two-subband quantum wire contains
contributions from both particle-hole excitations and plasmon excitations. For
double-layer quantum well structures, we examine individual contributions to
the scattering rate from quasiparticle as well as acoustic and optical plasmon
excitations at different electron densities and layer separations. We find that
the acoustic plasmon contribution in the two-component electron system does not
introduce any qualitatively new correction to the low energy inelastic
lifetime, and, in particular, does not produce the linear energy dependence of
carrier scattering rate as observed in the normal state of high-
superconductors.Comment: 16 pages, RevTeX, 7 figures. Also available at
http://www-cmg.physics.umd.edu/~lzheng