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Register a new userSubband anticrossing and the spin Hall effect in quantum wires
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We report on numerical simulations of the intrinsic spin Hall effect in semiconductor quantum wires as a function of the Rashba spin-orbit coupling strength, the electron density, and the width of the wire. We find that the strength of the spin Hall effect does not depend monotonically on these parameters, but instead exhibits a local maximum. This behavior is explained by considering the dispersion relation of the electrons in the wire, which is characterized by the anticrossing of adjacent subbands. These results lead to a simple estimate of the optimal wire width for spin Hall transport experiments, and simulations indicate that this optimal width is independent of disorder. The anticrossing of adjacent subbands is related to a quantum phase transition in momentum space, and is accompanied by an enhancement of the Berry curvature and subsequently in the magnitude of the spin Hall effect.
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We use numerical simulations to investigate the spin Hall effect in quantum wires in the presence of both Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling. We find that the intrinsic spin Hall effect is highly anisotropic with respect to the orientation of the wire, and that the nature of this anisotropy depends strongly on the electron density and the relative strengths of the Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling. In particular, at low densities when only one subband of the quantum wire is occupied, the spin Hall effect is strongest for electron momentum along the $[bar{1}10]$ axis, which is opposite than what is expected for the purely 2D case. In addition, when more than one subband is occupied, the strength and anisotropy of the spin Hall effect can vary greatly over relatively small changes in electron density, which makes it difficult to predict which wire orientation will maximize the strength of the spin Hall effect. These results help to illuminate the role of quantum confinement in spin-orbit-coupled systems, and can serve as a guide for future experimental work on the use of quantum wires for spin-Hall-based spintronic applications.
We demonstrate the emergence of the quantum Hall (QH) hierarchy in a 2D model of coupled quantum wires in a perpendicular magnetic field. At commensurate values of the magnetic field, the system can develop instabilities to appropriate inter-wire electron hopping processes that drive the system into a variety of QH states. Some of the QH states are not included in the Haldane-Halperin hierarchy. In addition, we find operators allowed at any field that lead to novel crystals of Laughlin quasiparticles. We demonstrate that any QH state is the groundstate of a Hamiltonian that we explicitly construct.
Proposed even-denominator fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) states suggest the possibility of excitations with non-Abelian braid statistics. Recent experiments on wide square quantum wells observe even-denominator FQHE even under electrostatic tilt. We theoretically analyze these structures and develop a procedure to accurately test proposed quantum Hall wavefunctions. We find that tilted wells favor partial subband polarization to yield Abelian even-denominator states. Our results show that tilting quantum wells effectively engineers different interaction potentials allowing exploration of a wide variety of even-denominator states.
The search for topologically non-trivial states of matter has become an important goal for condensed matter physics. Recently, a new class of topological insulators has been proposed. These topological insulators have an insulating gap in the bulk, but have topologically protected edge states due to the time reversal symmetry. In two dimensions the helical edge states give rise to the quantum spin Hall (QSH) effect, in the absence of any external magnetic field. Here we review a recent theory which predicts that the QSH state can be realized in HgTe/CdTe semiconductor quantum wells. By varying the thickness of the quantum well, the band structure changes from a normal to an inverted type at a critical thickness $d_c$. We present an analytical solution of the helical edge states and explicitly demonstrate their topological stability. We also review the recent experimental observation of the QSH state in HgTe/(Hg,Cd)Te quantum wells. We review both the fabrication of the sample and the experimental setup. For thin quantum wells with well width $d_{QW}< 6.3$ nm, the insulating regime shows the conventional behavior of vanishingly small conductance at low temperature. However, for thicker quantum wells ($d_{QW}> 6.3$ nm), the nominally insulating regime shows a plateau of residual conductance close to $2e^2/h$. The residual conductance is independent of the sample width, indicating that it is caused by edge states. Furthermore, the residual conductance is destroyed by a small external magnetic field. The quantum phase transition at the critical thickness, $d_c= 6.3$ nm, is also independently determined from the occurrence of a magnetic field induced insulator to metal transition.
We study the influence of the phase relaxation process on Hall resistance and spin Hall current of a mesoscopic two-dimensional (2D) four-terminal Hall cross-bar with or without Rashba spin-orbit interaction (SOI) in a perpendicular uniform magnetic field. We find that the plateaus of the Hall resistance with even number of edge states can survive for very strong phase relaxation when the system size becomes much longer than the phase coherence length. On the other hand, the odd integer Hall resistance plateaus arising from the SOI are easily destroyed by the weak phase relaxation during the competition between the magnetic field and the SOI which delocalize the edge states. In addition, we have also studied the transverse spin Hall current and found that it exhibits resonant behavior whenever the Fermi level crosses the Landau band of the system. The phase relaxation process weakens the resonant spin Hall current and enhances the non-resonant spin Hall current.
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