Carrier-carrier inelastic scattering events for spatially separated electrons: magnetic asymmetry and turnstile electron transfer

TL;DR

This paper develops an exact numerical method to analyze inelastic scattering between electrons in a quantum wire and ring, revealing magnetic asymmetry and turnstile effects, and proposes energy filtering to control these phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces a novel numerical approach for two-electron scattering in quantum systems and demonstrates how energy filters can eliminate inelastic effects and restore symmetry.

Findings

Inelastic scattering causes magnetic asymmetry and turnstile behavior.

Energy filters can suppress inelastic backscattering and electron transfer.

Restoring symmetry and removing turnstile effects by tuning energy levels.

Abstract

We consider a single electron traveling along a strictly one-dimensional quantum wire interacting with another electron in a quantum ring capacitively coupled to the wire. We develop an exact numerical method for treating the scattering problem within the stationary two-electron wave function picture. The considered process conserves the total energy but the electron within the wire passes a part of its energy to the ring. We demonstrate that the inelastic scattering results in both magnetic asymmetry of the transfer probability and a turnstile action of the ring on the electrons traveling separately along the ring. We demonstrate that the inelastic backscattering and / or inelastic electron transfer can be selectively eliminated from the process by inclusion of an energy filter into the wire in form of a double barrier system with the resonant energy level tuned to the energy of the incident electron. We demonstrate that the magnetic symmetry is restored when the inelastic backscattering is switched o?, and the turnstile character of the ring is removed when the energy transfer to the ring is excluded for both transferred and backscattered electron waves. We discuss the relation of the present results to the conductance systems based on the electron gas.