We demonstrate the trapping of electrons propagating ballistically at far-above-equilibrium energies in GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures in high magnetic field. We find low-loss transport along a gate-modified mesa edge in contrast to an effective decay of excess energy for the loop around a neighboring, mesa-confined node, enabling high-fidelity trapping. Measuring the full counting statistics via single-charge detection yields the trapping (and escape) probabilities of electrons scattered (and excited) within the node. Energetic and arrival-time distributions of captured electron wave packets are characterized by modulating tunnel barrier transmission.
We report the use of time- and angle-resolved two-photon photoemission to map the bound, unoccupied electronic structure of the weakly coupled graphene/Ir(111) system. The energy, dispersion, and lifetime of the lowest three image-potential states are measured. In addition, the weak interaction between Ir and graphene permits observation of resonant transitions from an unquenched Shockley-type surface state of the Ir substrate to graphene/Ir image-potential states. The image-potential-state lifetimes are comparable to those of mid-gap clean metal surfaces. Evidence of localization of the excited electrons on single-atom-layer graphene islands is provided by coverage-dependent measurements.
An electric field that builds in the direction against current, known as negative nonlocal resistance, arises naturally in viscous flows and is thus often taken as a telltale of this regime. Here we predict negative resistance for the ballistic regime, wherein the ee collision mean free path is greater than the length scale at which the system is being probed. Therefore, negative resistance alone does not provide strong evidence for the occurrence of the hydrodynamic regime; it must thus be demoted from the rank of a smoking gun to that of a mere forerunner. Furthermore, we find that negative response is log-enhanced in the ballistic regime by the physics related to the seminal Dorfman-Cohen log divergence due to memory effects in the kinetics of dilute gases. The ballistic regime therefore offers a unique setting for exploring these interesting effects due to electron interactions.
We report the observation of commensurability oscillations in an AlAs two-dimensional electron system where two conduction-band valleys with elliptical in-plane Fermi contours are occupied. The Fourier power spectrum of the oscillations shows two frequency components consistent with those expected for the Fermi contours of the two valleys. From an analysis of the spectra we deduce $m_l/m_t=5.2pm0.5$ for the ratio of the longitudinal and transverse electron effective masses.
Drag of electrons of 1D ballistic nanowire by a nearby 1D beam of ions is considered. We assume that the ion beam is represented by an ensemble of heavy ions of the same velocity $bf V$. The ratio of the drag current to primary current carried by the ion beam is calculated. The drag current appears to be a nonmonotonic function of velocity $V$, it has maxima for $V$ near $v_{nF}/2$ where $n$ is the number of electron miniband (channel) and $v_{nF}$ is the corresponding Fermi velocity. This means that the ion beam drag can be applied for ballistic nanostructure spectroscopy.
Destructive interference of single-electron tunneling between three quantum dots can trap an electron in a coherent superposition of charge on two of the dots. Coupling to external charges causes decoherence of this superposition, and in the presence of a large bias voltage each decoherence event transfers a certain number of electrons through the device. We calculate the counting statistics of the transferred charges, finding a crossover from sub-Poissonian to super-Poissonian statistics with increasing ratio of tunnel and decoherence rates.