  Interatomic coulombic decay (ICD) is a relaxation process induced by
electronic correlation. In this work we study the ICD process in a two coupled
Quantum wells (QWs) nano-structure. We study a simple one-dimensional effective
potential using experimental parameters of the semiconductor QW layers i.e.
using the single band effective-mass approximation . In our calculations we
consider the discontinuity of the effective mass of the electron in each of the
QW layers. We control the ICD lifetime by changing the distance between the two
wells. The expected overall trend is a decrease of ICD lifetime with a decrease
in the distance between the wells. We show that the distance can be tuned such
that the emitted ICD electron is trapped in a meta-stable state in the
continuum i.e. a one electron resonance state. This causes the life time of the
ICD to be an order of magnitude smaller even in very long distances, and
improves the efficiency of the ICD. For the ICD to be dominant decay mechanism
it must prevail over all other possible competitive decay processes. We have
found that the lifetime of the ICD is on the timescale of picoseconds.
Therefore, based on our results we can design an experiment that will observe
the ICD phenomenon in QWs nano-structure for the first time. This work can lead
to designing a wavelength sensitive detector which is efficient even in low
intensities.
