Energy relaxation and thermalization of hot electrons in quantum wires

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.