Coulomb drag effect in parallel cylindrical quantum wires

Abstract

We study the Coulomb drag rate for electrons in two parallel quantum wires. The double-quantum wire structure is modeled for a GaAs material with cylindrical wires having infinite potential barriers. The momentum transfer rate between the wires (Coulomb drag effect) is calculated as a function of temperature for several wire separation distances. We employ the full wave vector and frequency dependent random-phase approximation (RPA) at finite temperature to describe the effective interwire Coulomb interaction. We find that the drag rate at high temperatures (i.e., T ≥ EF/2) is dominated by the collective modes (plasmons) of the system similar to the case in double-well structures. Including the local-field effects in an approximate way we estimate the importance of intrawire correlations to be significant. Copyright © 1996 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.