No Arabic abstract
We have investigated hole transport in one-dimensional quantum wires in strained germanium two-dimensional layers. The ballistic conductance characteristics show the regular quantised plateaux in units of n2e2/h, where n is an integer. Additionally, new quantised levels are formed which correspond to values of n = 1/4 reducing to 1/8 in the presence of a strong parallel magnetic field which lifts the spin degeneracy but does not quantise the wavefunction. A further plateau is observed corresponding to n = 1/32 which does not change in the presence of a parallel magnetic field. These values indicate that the system is behaving as if charge was fractionalised with values e/2 and e/4, possible mechanisms are discussed.
Self-organisation requires a multi-component system. In turn, a multi-component system requires that there exist conditions in which more than one component is robust enough to survive. This is the case in the manganites because the free energies of surprisingly dissimilar competing states can be similar -- even in continuous systems that are chemically homogeneous. Here we describe the basic physics of the manganites and the nature of the competing phases. Using Landau theory we speculate on the exotic textures that may be created on a mesoscopic length scale of several unit cells.
We have observed millisecond-long coherent evolution of nuclear spins in a quantum wire at 1.2 K. Local, all-electrical manipulation of nuclear spins is achieved by dynamic nuclear polarization in the breakdown regime of the Integer Quantum Hall Effect combined with pulsed Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. The excitation thresholds for the breakdown are significantly smaller than what would be expected for our sample and the direction of the nuclear polarization can be controlled by the voltage bias. As a four-level spin system, the device is equivalent to two qubits.
The many-body wave-function of an interacting one-dimensional electron system is probed, focusing on the low-density, strong interaction regime. The properties of the wave-function are determined using tunneling between two long, clean, parallel quantum wires in a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure, allowing for gate-controlled electron density. As electron density is lowered to a critical value the many-body state abruptly changes from an extended state with a well-defined momentum to a localized state with a wide range of momentum components. The signature of the localized states appears as discrete tunneling features at resonant gate-voltages, corresponding to the depletion of single electrons and showing Coulomb-blockade behavior. Typically 5-10 such features appear, where the one-electron state has a single-lobed momentum distribution, and the few-electron states have double-lobed distributions with peaks at $pm k_F$. A theoretical model suggests that for a small number of particles (N<6), the observed state is a mixture of ground and thermally excited spin states.
The conductance threshold of a clean nearly straight quantum wire in which a single electron is bound is studied. This exhibits spin-dependent conductance anomalies on the rising edge to the first conductance plateau, near G=0.25(2e^{2}/h) and G=0.7(2e^{2}/h), related to a singlet and triplet resonances respectively. We show that the problem may be mapped on to an Anderson-type of Hamiltonian and calculate the energy dependence of the energy parameters in the resulting model.
A system of an array of side-coupled quantum-dots attached to a quantum wire is studied theoretically. Transport through the quantum wire is investigated by means of a noninteracting Anderson tunneling Hamiltonian. Analytical expressions of the transmission probability and phase are given. The transmission probability shows an energy spectrum with forbidden and allowed bands that depends on the up-down asymmetry of the system. In up-down symmetry only the gap survives, and in up-down asymmetry an allowed band is formed. We show that the allowed band arises by the indirect coupling between the up and down quantum dots. In addition, the band edges can be controlled by the degree of asymmetry of the quantum dots. We discuss the analogy between this phenomenon with the Dicke effect in optics.