No Arabic abstract
We theoretically investigate the effect of the negative differential conductance of a ferromagnetic barrier on the surface of a topological insulator. Due to the changes of the shape and position of the Fermi surfaces in the ferromagnetic barrier, the transport processes can be divided into three kinds: the total, partial and blockade transmission mechanisms. The bias voltage can give rise to the transition of the transport processes from partial to blockade transmission mechanisms, which results in a giant effect of negative differential conductance. With appropriate structural parameters, the current-voltage characteristics show that the minimum value of the current can reach to zero in a wide range of the bias voltage, and a large peak-to-valley current ratio can be obtained.
Asymmetric electrical conductance is theoretically demonstrated on the surface of a topological insulator (TI) in the limit of infinitesimally small forward and reverse biases between two spin selective electrodes. The discontinuous behavior relies on the spin-momentum interlocked nature of TI surface electrons together with the resulting imbalance in the coupling coefficients between the electrodes and TI surface states. The analysis is based on a transmission matrix model that, in combination with a phenomenological treatment for the diffusive limit, accounts for both ballistic and scattered paths simultaneously. With the estimated conductance asymmetry over a factor of 10, implementation in the ratchet-like applications and low-voltage rectification circuits appears practicable.
The surface of topological insulators is proposed as a promising platform for spintronics and quantum information applications. In particular, when time- reversal symmetry is broken, topological surface states are expected to exhibit a wide range of exotic spin phenomena for potential implementation in electronics. Such devices need to be fabricated using nanoscale artificial thin films. It is of critical importance to study the spin behavior of artificial topological MBE thin films associated with magnetic dopants, and with regards to quantum size effects related to surface-to-surface tunneling as well as experimentally isolate time-reversal breaking from non-intrinsic surface electronic gaps. Here we present observation of the first (and thorough) study of magnetically induced spin reorientation phenomena on the surface of a topological insulator. Our results reveal dramatic rearrangements of the spin configuration upon magnetic doping contrasted with chemically similar nonmagnetic doping as well as with quantum tunneling phenomena in ultra-thin high quality MBE films. While we observe that the spin rearrangement induced by quantum tunneling occurs in a time-reversal invariant fashion, we present critical and systematic observation of an out-of-plane spin texture evolution correlated with magnetic interactions, which breaks time-reversal symmetry, demonstrating microscopic TRB at a Kramers point on the surface.
Low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy are employed to investigate electron tunneling from a C60-terminated tip into a Cu(111) surface. Tunneling between a C60 orbital and the Shockley surface states of copper is shown to produce negative differential conductance (NDC) contrary to conventional expectations. NDC can be tuned through barrier thickness or C60 orientation up to complete extinction. The orientation dependence of NDC is a result of a symmetry matching between the molecular tip and the surface states.
We study transport across a time-dependent magnetic barrier present on the surface of a three-dimensional topological insulator. We show that such a barrier can be implemented for Dirac electrons on the surface of a three-dimensional topological insulator by a combination of a proximate magnetic material and linearly polarized external radiation. We find that the conductance of the system can be tuned by varying the frequency and amplitude of the radiation and the energy of an electron incident on the barrier providing us optical control on the conductance of such junctions. We first study a $delta$-function barrier which shows a number of interesting features such as sharp peaks and dips in the transmission at certain angles of incidence. Approximate methods for studying the limits of small and large frequencies are presented. We then study a barrier with a finite width. This gives rise to some new features which are not present for a $delta$-function barrier, such as resonances in the conductance at certain values of the system parameters. We present a perturbation theory for studying the limit of large driving amplitude and use this to understand the resonances. Finally, we use a semiclassical approach to study transmission across a time-dependent barrier and show how this can qualitatively explain some of the results found in the earlier analysis. We discuss experiments which can test our theory.
Electron tunneling through a two stage Kondo system constituted by a double quantum-dot molecule side coupled to a quantum wire, under the effect of a finite external potential is studied. We found that $I$-$V$ characteristic shows a negative differential conductance region induced by the electronic correlation. This phenomenon is a consequence of the properties of the two stage Kondo regime under the effect of an external applied potential that takes the system out of equilibrium. The problem is solved using the mean-field finite-$U$ slave-boson formalism.