No Arabic abstract
Semiconductor billiards are often considered as ideal systems for studying dynamical chaos in the quantum mechanical limit. In the traditional picture, once the electrons mean free path, as determined by the mobility, becomes larger than the device, disorder is negligible and electron trajectories are shaped by specular reflection from the billiard walls alone. Experimental insight into the electron dynamics is normally obtained by magnetoconductance measurements. A number of recent experimental studies have shown these measurements to be largely independent of the billiards exact shape, and highly dependent on sample-to-sample variations in disorder. In this paper, we discuss these more recent findings within the full historical context of work on semiconductor billiards, and offer strong evidence that small-angle scattering at the sub-100 nm length-scale dominates transport in these devices, with important implications for the role these devices can play for experimental tests of ideas in quantum chaos.
We demonstrate the existence of a novel breather mode in the self-consistent electron dynamics of a semiconductor quantum well. A non-perturbative variational method based on quantum hydrodynamics is used to determine the salient features of the electron breather mode. Numerical simulations of the time-dependent Wigner-Poisson or Hartree equations are shown to be in excellent agreement with our analytical results. For asymmetric quantum wells, a signature of the breather mode is observed in the dipole response, which can be detected by standard optical means.
Using the tight-binding model and the generalized Greens function formalism, the effect of quantum interference on the electron transport through the benzene molecule in a semiconductor/benzene/semiconductor junction is numerically investigated. We show how the quantum interference sources, different contact positions and local gate, can control the transmission characteristics of the electrode/molecule/electrode junction. We also study the occurrence of anti-resonant states in the transmission probability function using a simple graphical scheme (introduced in Ref.[Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys, 2011, 13, 1431]) for different geometries of the contacts between the benzene molecule and semiconductor(silicon and titanium dioxide) electrodes.
Nonlinear charge transport in strongly coupled semiconductor superlattices is described by Wigner-Poisson kinetic equations involving one or two minibands. Electron-electron collisions are treated within the Hartree approximation whereas other inelastic collisions are described by a modified BGK (Bhatnaghar-Gross-Krook) model. The hyperbolic limit is such that the collision frequencies are of the same order as the Bloch frequencies due to the electric field and the corresponding terms in the kinetic equation are dominant. In this limit, spatially nonlocal drift-diffusion balance equations for the miniband populations and the electric field are derived by means of the Chapman-Enskog perturbation technique. For a lateral superlattice with spin-orbit interaction, electrons with spin up or down have different energies and their corresponding drift-diffusion equations can be used to calculate spin-polarized currents and electron spin polarization. Numerical solutions show stable self-sustained oscillations of the current and the spin polarization through a voltage biased lateral superlattice thereby providing an example of superlattice spin oscillator.
Although 2011 marks the 50th anniversary of Nb3Sn as the first high field superconductor, real understanding of its upper critical field behavior {mu}0Hc2 is incomplete. Here we show surprising {mu}0Hc2 data on highly homogeneous bulk samples examined both by small-current, transport and by volumetric-averaging specific heat and the reversible magnetization techniques, which exhibit identical upper critical field {mu}0Hc2(0.3 K) ~ 29{pm} 0.2 T with or without undergoing the cubic to tetragonal transition, a result in strong contrast to widely used multiple-source data compilations that show a strong depression of {mu}0Hc2(0K) from 29 T to 21.4 T in the tetragonal state.
We use temporally resolved intensity cross-correlation measurements to identify the biexciton-exciton radiative cascades in a negatively charged QD. The polarization sensitive correlation measurements show unambiguously that the excited two electron triplet states relax non-radiatively to their singlet ground state via a spin non conserving flip-flop with the ground state heavy hole. We explain this mechanism in terms of resonant coupling between the confined electron states and an LO phonon. This resonant interaction together with the electron-hole exchange interaction provides an efficient mechanism for this, otherwise spin-blockaded, electronic relaxation.