Inelastic Coulomb scattering rates due to acoustic and optical plasmon modes in coupled quantum wires

Abstract

We report a theoretical study on the inelastic Coulomb scattering rate of an injected electron in two coupled quantum wires in quasi-one-dimensional doped semiconductors. Two peaks appear in the scattering spectrum due to the optical and the acoustic plasmon scattering in the system. We find that the scattering rate due to the optical plasmon mode is similar to that in a single wire but the acoustic plasmon scattering depends crucially on its dispersion relation at small $q$. Furthermore, the effects of tunneling between the two wires are studied on the inelastic Coulomb scattering rate. We show that a weak tunneling can strongly affect the acoustic plasmon scattering.