Vertex-Correction-Driven Intersubband Spin-Density Excitonic Instability in Double Quantum Well Structures

Abstract

We show that exchange-correlation induced many-body excitonic vertex correction may lead to an instability in the normal ground state of a semiconductor double quantum well structure by suppressing the symmetric-antisymmetric intersubband gap at low but accessible (\AA{} 0.7 \ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{} ${10}^{11}$ ${\mathrm{cm}}^{\ensuremath{-}2}$) electron densities. We predict as a consequence a novel electronic phase transition where the lowest intersubband spin-density-excitation gap vanishes giving rise to a new many-body triplet excitonic liquid ground state which is more stable at low densities than the usual two dimensional Fermi liquid phase.