No Arabic abstract
We investigate the hydrodynamic flow of strongly interacting Dirac electrons in a nozzle geometry, which can for instance be realized with graphene. We show that a nozzle can induce a transition from subsonic to supersonic flow. This transition causes a shock wave of the electrons downstream of the throat of the nozzle, which is a distinct signature of hydrodynamic transport. We demonstrate that this effect is visible in the voltage profile along the nozzle when applying a bias and thus represents a suitable experimental probe of the hydrodynamic regime. In particular, there is a section of the nozzle with pronounced negative local resistance and a discontinuity of the local voltage induced by the shock wave.
Graphene hosts a unique electron system in which electron-phonon scattering is extremely weak but electron-electron collisions are sufficiently frequent to provide local equilibrium above liquid nitrogen temperature. Under these conditions, electrons can behave as a viscous liquid and exhibit hydrodynamic phenomena similar to classical liquids. Here we report strong evidence for this transport regime. We find that doped graphene exhibits an anomalous (negative) voltage drop near current injection contacts, which is attributed to the formation of submicrometer-size whirlpools in the electron flow. The viscosity of graphenes electron liquid is found to be ~0.1 m$^2$ /s, an order of magnitude larger than that of honey, in agreement with many-body theory. Our work shows a possibility to study electron hydrodynamics using high quality graphene.
We report non-local electrical measurements in a mesoscopic size two-dimensional (2D) electron gas in a GaAs quantum well in a hydrodynamic regime. Viscous electric flow is expected to be dominant when electron-electron collisions occur more often than the impurity or phonon scattering events. We observe a negative nonlocal resistance and attribute it to the formation of whirlpools in the electron flow. We use the different nonlocal transport geometries and compare the results with a theory demonstrating the significance of hydrodynamics in mesoscopic samples.
We present a theory of the phonon-assisted nonlinear dc transport of 2D electrons in high Landau levels. The nonlinear dissipative resistivity displays quantum magneto-oscillations governed by two parameters which are proportional to the Hall drift velocity $v_H$ of electrons in electric field and the speed of sound $s$. In the subsonic regime, $v_H<s$, the theory quantitatively reproduces the oscillation pattern observed in recent experiments. We also find the $pi/2$ phase change of oscillations across the sound barrier $v_H=s$. In the supersonic regime, $v_H>s$, the amplitude of oscillations saturates with lowering temperature, while the subsonic region displays exponential suppression of the phonon-assisted oscillations with temperature.
We demonstrate a tunable negative differential resistance controlled by spin blockade in single electron transistors. The single electron transistors containing a few electrons and spin polarized source and drain contacts were formed in GaAs/GaAlAs heterojunctions using metallic gates. Coulomb blockade measurements performed as a function of applied source-drain bias, electron number and magnetic field reveal well defined regimes where a decrease in the current is observed with increasing bias. We establish that the origin of the negative differential regime is the spin-polarized detection of electrons combined with a long spin relaxation time in the dot. These results indicate new functionalities that may be utilized in nano-spintronic devices in which the spin state is electro-statically controlled via the electron occupation number.
We have studied the electrical conductivity of the electron gas in parallel electric and magnetic fields directed along the plane of a parabolic quantum well (across the profile of the potential). We found a general expression for the electrical conductivity applicable for any magnitudes of the magnetic field and the degree of degeneration of the electron gas. A new mechanism of generation of the negative magnetoresistance has been revealed. It has been shown that in a parabolic quantum well with a non-degenerated electron gas the negative magnetoresistance results from spin splitting of the levels of the size quantization.