Tunable contributions from rectification and momentum transfer to 1D Coulomb Drag

Abstract: Coulomb drag is a powerful tool to study interactions in coupled low-dimensional systems. Historically, Coulomb drag has been attributed to a frictional force arising from momentum transfer whose direction is dictated by the current flow. However recent findings in one-dimensional systems have also identified a rectified contribution that is independent of the current flow direction. In this work, we present Coulomb drag measurements between vertically coupled GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wires separated vertically by a hard barrier only 15 nm wide where both momentum transfer and rectified Coulomb drag signals are observed simultaneously, and whose relative magnitude are temperature and gate tunable. Our study opens up the possibility of studying the physical mechanisms behind the onset of both momentum transfer and charge rectification drag simultaneously in a single device, ultimately leading to a better understanding of Luttinger liquids in multi-channel wires and paving the way for the creation of energy harvesting devices.