Experimental studies of the electron-phonon interaction in InGaAs quantum wires

Electron-heating measurements are used to compare the form of the electron-phonon interaction in two-dimensional, and quasi-one-dimensional, InGaAs quantum wires. Evidence for a strongly enhanced interaction is found in the quasi-one-dimensional wire, and is suggested to result from the presence of the singularities in its electronic density of states. The Bloch-Gruneisen criterion is easily violated in this wire, and its energy-loss function is found to show a weak temperature dependence, which is argued to result from a saturation of scattering processes in the uppermost one-dimensional subband.