title: Thermalization of nonequilibrium electrons in quantum wires.
abstract: We study the problem of energy relaxation in a one-dimensional electron system. The leading thermalization mechanism is due to three-particle collisions. We show that for the case of spinless electrons in a single channel quantum wire the corresponding collision integral can be transformed into an exactly solvable problem. The latter is known as the Schrödinger equation for a quantum particle moving in a Pöschl-Teller potential. The spectrum for the resulting eigenvalue problem allows for bound-state solutions, which can be identified with the zero modes of the collision integral, and a continuum of propagating modes, which are separated by a gap from the bound states. The inverse gap gives the time scale at which counterpropagating electrons thermalize.
authors.affiliation: Dahlem Center for Complex Quantum Systems and Institut für Theoretische Physik, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Tobias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Micklitz
authors.forename: Alex
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Levchenko