Rate of electron tunneling in double quantum wells with nonideal interfaces

The electron tunneling relaxation rate ν caused by scattering from interface roughness in double quantum wells is calculated as a function of the interlevel splitting Δ and the coupling level numbers. The dependence ν(Δ) near the resonances is asymmetric with respect to Δ=0. This asymmetry appears because the roughnesses cause not only nonuniform changes to the electron quantization energies, but also inhomogeneities of the tunneling matrix element. The results are compared with the experimental data.