Thermalization of One-Dimensional Electron Gas by Many-Body Coulomb Scattering

Quantum wires are peculiar in the sense that binary electron-electron collisions cannot thermalize energy distribution of the electrons in the same subband. We show that such thermalization occurs through many-body Coulomb scattering. We consider one-dimensional electron gas described by Newton equations of motion with many-body Coulomb forces. These equations are solved by molecular dynamics technique. Thermalization of the non-equilibrium distribution towards Maxwell function is demonstrated for a single-subband GaAs wire.