MANY-BODY PROPERTIES OF A QUASI-ONE-DIMENSIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR QUANTUM WIRE

We study the many-body exchange-correlation properties of electrons confined to the lowest subband of a quantum wire, including effects of impurity scattering. Without impurity scattering, virtual excitations of arbitrarily low-energy plasmons destroy the Fermi surface of the electrons, whereas the presence of impurity scattering damps out these plasmons and restores the Fermi surface. The electron inelastic scattering rate GAMMA in the absence of impurity scattering is zero below k(c) corresponding to the plasmon emission threshold, above which GAMMA diverges as (k-k(c))-1/2. For typical wire widths and electron densities currently available, the band-gap renormalization is found to be approximately 10-20 meV.