Electron-electron interaction in a narrow, disordered electron gas in nonequilibrium

Abstract
The dephasing of nonequilibrium electrons by electron-electron interaction was studied in the diffusive regime. This was done by measuring the effect of an external bias voltage on weak localization in a quasi-one-dimensional electron gas. We find that electrons not in thermal equilibrium lose phase in quantitative agreement with the lifetime theory for an ideal two-dimensional electron gas. This is in contrast to thermalized electrons for which Nyquist phase breaking is most important.