Coulomb drag between disordered two-dimensional electron gas layers

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

We derive and evaluate expressions for the frictional Coulomb drag between disordered two-dimensional electron gas layers. Our derivation is based on the memory-function formalism and the expression for the drag reduces to previously known results in the ballistic limit. We find that Coulomb drag is appreciably enhanced by disorder at low temperatures when the mean-free-path within a layer is comparable to or shorter than the layer separation. In high mobility two-dimensional electron gas systems, where the drag has been studied experimentally, the effect of disorder on the drag is negligible at attainable temperatures. We predict that an enhancement due to disorder and a crossover in the temperature-dependence and layer-separation dependence will be observable at low temperatures in moderate and low mobility samples.

Related collections

Most cited references 6

Record: found
Abstract: not found
Article: not found

Mutual friction between parallel two-dimensional electron systems

T Gramila, J P Eisenstein, A. MacDonald … (1991)

0 comments Cited 175 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: found

Is Open Access

Coulomb drag between two-dimensional electron systems

Henrik Smith, Antti-Pekka Jauho (1992)

The Coulomb contribution to the temperature-dependent rate of momentum transfer, \(1/\tau_D\), between two electron systems in parallel layers is determined by setting up two coupled Boltzmann equations, with the boundary condition that no current flows in the layer where an induced voltage is measured. The effective Coulomb interaction between the layers is determined selfconsistently, allowing for the finite thickness of the layers. As \(T\rightarrow 0\), we find that \(1/\tau_DT^2\) approaches a constant value. At higher temperatures \(1/\tau_DT^2\) exhibits a maximum at \(T=T_{\rm max}\) and then decreases as \(1/T\) with increasing temperature. The value of \(T_{\rm max}\) depends on the layer separation \(d\) according to \(T_{\rm max}\propto d^{-\alpha}\), where \(\alpha\simeq 0.8\). The overall magnitude of the calculated \(1/\tau_D\) is approximately one half of the results of a recent experiment, suggesting that other mechanisms of momentum transfer may be important.