Triple-electron collisions in a quantum wire

The effect of intrasubband triple-electron collisions on the kinetics of a nondegenerate one-dimensional electron gas (1DEG) is investigated since binary collisions give zero contribution to the relaxation. The scattering probabilities are derived from the Lippmann-Schwinger equation for the transition matrix. The corresponding relaxation frequency is of the order of nvTmin[1,(e2/LLatin small letter h with strokevT)3], where =e2n/LT is the plasma parameter, n, T, and vT are the concentration, temperature, and thermal velocity of the 1DEG, respectively, and L is the dielectric constant. The relaxation frequency can reach a value of 1012/s, comparable to that by other scattering mechanisms, and indicates the importance of the effect for the relaxation of a 1DEG.