Partition of Two Interacting Electrons by a Potential Barrier

TL;DR

This paper theoretically investigates how Coulomb interactions between two hot electrons affect their scattering and partitioning at a potential barrier in the quantum Hall regime, revealing energy changes and deviations from noninteracting behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a model predicting energy exchange and altered partition probabilities due to electron interactions, aligning with recent experimental observations.

Findings

Coulomb interaction causes kinetic energy changes during scattering.

Partition probabilities deviate from noninteracting predictions due to interactions.

Probabilities show nonmonotonic dependence on barrier height, matching experiments.

Abstract

Scattering or tunneling of an electron at a potential barrier is a fundamental quantum effect. Electron-electron interactions often affect the scattering, and understanding of the interaction effect is crucial in detection of various phenomena of electron transport and their application to electron quantum optics. We theoretically study the partition and collision of two interacting hot electrons at a potential barrier in the quantum Hall regime. We predict their kinetic energy change by their Coulomb interaction during the scattering delay time inside the barrier. The energy change results in characteristic deviation of the partition probabilities from the noninteracting case. The derivation includes nonmonotonic dependence of the probabilities on the barrier height, which agrees with recent experiments, and reduction of the fermionic antibunching.