Pair Scattering of Electrons in Edge Channels of Opposite Chiralities in the Presence of a Disorder Potential

TL;DR

This paper investigates how disorder enables energy transfer between counter-propagating edge channels in the quantum Hall effect, highlighting Coulomb scattering as the dominant mechanism and providing experimentally relevant estimates.

Contribution

It introduces a perturbative calculation of energy transfer involving disorder-enabled two-electron processes in quantum Hall edge channels, including Coulomb and phonon interactions.

Findings

Coulomb scattering dominates energy transfer in the system.

Energy transfer exhibits a quasi-threshold dependence on nonequilibrium.

Theoretical estimates suggest the effect is observable in GaAs systems.

Abstract

The nonequilibrium transfer of the energy between electrons of counter-propagating quasi-one-dimensional systems has been perturbatively calculated for edge channels in a two-dimensional system in the integer quantum Hall effect. The processes involving two electrons that are allowed only in the system with disorder have been taken into account. Expressions for the cases of Coulomb scattering and transfer of nonequilibrium phonons have been obtained. The energy transferred per unit time has a quasi-threshold dependence on the degree of nonequilibrium of the hot channel. According to numerical estimates for electrons in GaAs, Coulomb scattering processes dominate in the energy transfer and the expected effect can be experimentally observed.