No Arabic abstract
Electron interactions in and between wires become increasingly complex and important as circuits are scaled to nanometre sizes, or employ reduced-dimensional conductors like carbon nanotubes, nanowires and gated high mobility 2D electron systems. This is because the screening of the long-range Coulomb potential of individual carriers is weakened in these systems, which can lead to phenomenon such as Coulomb drag: a current in one wire induces a voltage in a second wire through Coulomb interactions alone. Previous experiments have observed electron drag in wires separated by a soft electrostatic barrier $gtrsim$ 80 nm. Here, we measure both positive and negative drag between adjacent vertical quantum wires that are separated by $sim$ 15 nm and have independent contacts, which allows their electron densities to be tuned independently. We map out the drag signal versus the number of electron subbands occupied in each wire, and interpret the results in terms of momentum-transfer and charge-fluctuation induced transport models. For wires of significantly different subband occupancies, the positive drag effect can be as large as 25%.
The presence of pronounced electronic correlations in one-dimensional systems strongly enhances Coulomb coupling and is expected to result in distinctive features in the Coulomb drag between them that are absent in the drag between two-dimensional systems. We review recent Fermi and Luttinger liquid theories of Coulomb drag between ballistic one-dimensional electron systems, and give a brief summary of the experimental work reported so far on one-dimensional drag. Both the Fermi liquid (FL) and the Luttinger liquid (LL) theory predict a maximum of the drag resistance R_D when the one-dimensional subbands of the two quantum wires are aligned and the Fermi wave vector k_F is small, and also an exponential decay of R_D with increasing inter-wire separation, both features confirmed by experimental observations. A crucial difference between the two theoretical models emerges in the temperature dependence of the drag effect. Whereas the FL theory predicts a linear temperature dependence, the LL theory promises a rich and varied dependence on temperature depending on the relative magnitudes of the energy and length scales of the systems. At higher temperatures, the drag should show a power-law dependence on temperature, $R_D ~ T^x$, experimentally confirmed in a narrow temperature range, where x is determined by the Luttinger liquid parameters. The spin degree of freedom plays an important role in the LL theory in predicting the features of the drag effect and is crucial for the interpretation of experimental results.
Coulomb drag is a process whereby the repulsive interactions between electrons in spatially separated conductors enable a current flowing in one of the conductors to induce a voltage drop in the other. If the second conductor is part of a closed circuit, a net current will flow in that circuit. The drag current is typically much smaller than the drive current owing to the heavy screening of the Coulomb interaction. There are, however, rare situations in which strong electronic correlations exist between the two conductors. For example, bilayer two-dimensional electron systems can support an exciton condensate consisting of electrons in one layer tightly bound to holes in the other. One thus expects perfect drag; a transport current of electrons driven through one layer is accompanied by an equal one of holes in the other. (The electrical currents are therefore opposite in sign.) Here we demonstrate just this effect, taking care to ensure that the electron-hole pairs dominate the transport and that tunneling of charge between the layers is negligible.
We evaluate the Coulomb drag current in two finite-length Tomonaga-Luttinger-liquid wires coupled by an electrostatic backscattering interaction. The drag current in one wire shows oscillations as a function of the bias voltage applied to the other wire, reflecting interferences of the plasmon standing waves in the interacting wires. In agreement with this picture, the amplitude of the current oscillations is reduced with increasing temperature. This is a clear signature of non-Fermi-liquid physics because for coupled Fermi liquids the drag resistance is always expected to increase as the temperature is raised.
Recent years have seen a surge of interest in studies of hydrodynamic transport in electronic systems. We investigate the electron viscosity of metals and find a new component that is closely related to Coulomb drag. Using the linear response theory, viscosity, a transport coefficient for momentum, can be extracted from the retarded correlation function of the momentum flux, i.e., the stress tensor. There exists a previously overlooked contribution to the shear viscosity from the interacting part of the stress tensor which accounts for the momentum flow induced by interactions. This contribution, which we dub drag viscosity, is caused by the frictional drag force due to long-range interactions. It is therefore linked to Coulomb drag which also originates from the interaction induced drag force. Starting from the Kubo formula and using the Keldysh technique, we compute the drag viscosity of 2D and 3D metals along with the drag resistivity of double-layer 2D electronic systems. Both the drag resistivity and drag viscosity exhibit a crossover from quadratic-in-T behavior at low temperatures to a linear one at higher temperatures. Although the drag viscosity appears relatively small compared with the normal Drude component for the clean metals, it may dominate hydrodynamic transport in some systems, which are discussed in the conclusion.
Coulomb drag between parallel quantum wells provides a uniquely sensitive measurement of electron correlations since the drag response depends on interactions only. Recently it has been demonstrated that a new regime of strong interactions can be accessed for devices consisting of two monlolayer graphene (MLG) crystals, separated by few layer hexagonal boron-nitride. Here we report measurement of Coulomb drag in a double bilayer graphene (BLG) stucture, where the interaction potential is anticipated to be yet further enhanced compared to MLG. At low temperatures and intermediate densities a new drag response with inverse sign is observed, distinct from the momentum and energy drag mechanisms previously reported in double MLG. We demonstrate that by varying the device aspect ratio the negative drag component can be suppressed and a response showing excellent agreement with the density and temperature dependance predicted for momentum drag in double BLG is found. Our results pave the way for pursuit of emergent phases in strongly interacting bilayers, such as the exciton condensate.