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arXiv:2608.02812

Magneto-oscillations, nonlinearity, and nonreciprocity of Coulomb drag in quantum circuits

Alex Levchenko, Mingyang Zheng, Dominique Laroche

cond-mat.mes-hallquant-phSubmitted Aug 3, 2026• Announced Aug 5, 2026

v1 · Aug 3, 2026 v2 · Oct 19, 2026

Abstract

We consider the problem of Coulomb drag in interactively coupled quantum circuits built of adiabatic constrictions: quantum point contacts and short quantum-wire channels. The interplay of spatial confinement and magnetic field leads to a rich oscillatory response of the drag current as a function of gate voltage and magnetic field: drag peaks track the depopulation of magnetoelectric subbands, are asymptotically periodic in inverse field, and their visibility is controlled by the competition of temperature with the field-sharpened tunneling width of the constriction. We derive a closed expression for the linear drag conductance whose interaction kernel simplifies dramatically in the experimentally relevant limit of a long thermal length compared with the range of the interwire coupling, investigate the drag in the nonlinear regime, where the drag current measures the transconductance of the drive channel at any field, and discuss physically motivated models of dissipation-induced nonreciprocity of the drag signal. Extensions accounting for Zeeman splitting, interaction renormalization of the barrier transmission, backscattering at high field, and the frequency structure of the circuit coupling delineate how each mechanism imprints itself on the temperature dependence and lineshapes of the drag oscillations.

Journal reference: Phys. Rev. B 114, 305301 (2026)
DOI: 10.1103/bg21-83qt
Comments: 14 pages, 10 figures

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We evaluate the Coulomb drag current in two finite-length Tomonaga-Luttinger-liquid wires coupled by an electrostatic backscattering interaction. The drag current in one wire shows oscillations as a function of the bias voltage applied to the other wire, reflecting interferences of the plasmon standing waves in the interacting wires. In agreement with this picture, the amplitude of the current oscillations is reduced with increasing temperature. This is a clear signature of non-Fermi-liquid physics because for coupled Fermi liquids the drag resistance is always expected to increase as the temperature is raised.

Charge carriers moving in a quantum wire may induce, via the Coulomb interaction and momentum conservation, a drag current in another quantum wire located nearby. In addition, tunnelling of carriers between the two parallel wires is considered. For spinless carriers the problem can be mapped onto the one-dimensional Hubbard model. The exact solution of the Hubbard chain and conformal field theory are used to calculate the critical exponents for the temperature dependence of the drag current between the two wires. The exponents are non-universal and depend on the interaction strength, the band filling and the tunnelling amplitude. For a repulsive interaction the drag current is opposite to the driving current, while for an attractive interaction they are parallel.

We observed negative Coulomb drag for parallel coupled quantum wires, in which electrons flow in the opposite directions between the wires. This only occurred under the conditions of strong correlation in the wires, that is, low density, high magnetic field, and low temperature, and cannot be addressed by a standard theory of momentum transfer. We propose a Coulomb drag model in which formation of a Wigner crystal state in the drag wire and a particle-like state in the drive wire is taken into account.

We study the transconductance for two coupled one-dimensional wires or edge states described by Luttinger liquid models. The wires are assumed to interact over a finite segment. We find for the interaction parameter

g\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}1/2

that the drag rate is finite at zero temperature, which cannot occur in a Fermi-liquid system. The zero temperature drag is, however, cut off at low temperature due to the finite length of the wires. We also consider edge states in the fractional quantum Hall regime, and suggest that low temperature enhancement of the drag effect might be seen in this regime.