Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userTheory of NMR in semiconductor quantum point contact devices
118
0
0.0
(
0
)
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
We describe how a local non-equilibrium nuclear polarisation can be generated and detected by electrical means in a semiconductor quantum point contact device. We show that measurements of the nuclear spin relaxation rate will provide clear signatures of the interaction mechanism underlying the 0.7 conductance anomaly. Our analysis illustrates how nuclear magnetic resonance methods, which are used extensively to study strongly-correlated electron phases in bulk materials, can be made to play a similarly important role in nanoscale devices.
rate research
Read More
We propose a probe based on nuclear relaxation and Knight shift measurements for the Kondo scenario for the 0.7 feature in semiconductor quantum point contact (QPC) devices. We show that the presence of a bound electron in the QPC would lead to a much higher rate of nuclear relaxation compared to nuclear relaxation through exchange of spin with conduction electrons. Furthermore, we show that the temperature dependence of this nuclear relaxation is very non-monotonic as opposed to the linear-T relaxation from coupling with conduction electrons. We present a qualitative analysis for the additional relaxation due to nuclear spin diffusion (NSD) and study the extent to which NSD affects the range of validity of our method. The conclusion is that nuclear relaxation, in combination with Knight shift measurements, can be used to verify whether the 0.7 feature is indeed due to the presence of a bound electron in the QPC.
Proposals for studying topological superconductivity and Majorana bound states in nanowires proximity coupled to superconductors require that transport in the nanowire is ballistic. Previous work on hybrid nanowire-superconductor systems has shown evidence for Majorana bound states, but these experiments were also marked by disorder, which disrupts ballistic transport. In this letter, we demonstrate ballistic transport in InSb nanowires interfaced directly with superconducting Al by observing quantized conductance at zero-magnetic field. Additionally, we demonstrate that the nanowire is proximity coupled to the superconducting contacts by observing Andreev reflection. These results are important steps for robustly establishing topological superconductivity in InSb nanowires.
We report experimental results on a quantum point contact (QPC) device formed in a wide AlAs quantum well where the two-dimensional electrons occupy two in-plane valleys with elliptical Fermi contours. To probe the closely-spaced, one-dimensional electric subbands, we fabricated a point contact device defined by shallow-etching and a top gate that covers the entire device. The conductance versus top gate bias trace shows a series of weak plateaus at integer multiples of $2e^2/h$, indicating a broken valley degeneracy in the QPC and implying the potential use of QPC as a simple valley filter device. A model is presented to describe the quantized energy levels and the role of the in-plane valleys in the transport. We also observe a well-developed conductance plateau near $0.7x2e^2/h$ which may reflect the strong electron-electron interaction in the system.
In the hole-doped $d_{x^{2}-y^{2}}$-wave cuprate superconductor, due to the midgap surface state (MSS), a zero bias conductance peak (ZBCP) is widely observed in [110] interface point contact spectroscopy (PCS). However, ZBCP of this geometry is rarely observed in the electron-doped cuprates, even though their pairing symmetry is still likely the $d_{x^{2}-y^{2}}$-wave. We argue that this is due to the coexistence of antiferromagnetic (AF) and the superconducting (SC) orders. Generalizing the Blonder-Tinkham-Klapwijk (BTK) formula to include an AF coupling, it is shown explicitly that the MSS is destroyed by the AF order. The calculated PCS is in good agreement with the experiments.
When the motion of electrons is restricted to a plane under a perpendicular magnetic field B, a variety of quantum phases emerge at low temperatures whose properties are dictated by the Coulomb interaction and its interplay with disorder. At very strong B, the sequence of fractional quantum Hall (FQH) liquid phases terminates in an insulating phase, which is widely believed to be due to the solidification of electrons into domains possessing Wigner crystal (WC) order. The existence of such WC domains is signaled by the emergence of microwave pinning-mode resonances, which reflect the mechanical properties characteristic of a solid. However, the most direct manifestation of the broken translational symmetry accompanying the solidification - the spatial modulation of particles probability amplitude - has not been observed yet. Here, we demonstrate that nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) provides a direct probe of the density topography of electron solids in the integer and fractional quantum Hall regimes. The data uncover quantum and thermal fluctuation of lattice electrons resolved on the nanometre scale. Our results pave the way to studies of other exotic phases with non-trivial spatial spin/charge order.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
