No Arabic abstract
We have observed shot noise in the hopping conduction of two dimensional carriers confined in a p-type SiGe quantum well at a temperature of 4K. Moreover, shot noise is suppressed relative to its ``classical value 2eI by an amount that depends on the length of the sample and carrier density, which was controlled by a gate voltage. We have found a suppression factor to the classical value of about one half for a 2 $mu$m long sample, and of one fifth for a 5 $mu$m sample. In each case, the factor decreased slightly as the density increased toward the insulator-metal transition. We explain these results in terms of the characteristic length ($simeq 1mu$m in our case) of the inherent inhomogeneity of hopping transport.
We study a current shot noise in a macroscopic insulator based on a two-dimensional electron system in GaAs in a variable range hopping (VRH) regime. At low temperature and in a sufficiently depleted sample a shot noise close to a full Poissonian value is measured. This suggests an observation of a finite-size effect in shot noise in the VRH conduction and demonstrates a possibility of accurate quasiparticle charge measurements in the insulating regime.
As is well known, the fluctuations from a stable stationary nonequilibrium state are described by a linearized nonhomogeneous Boltzmann-Langevin equation. The stationary state itself may be described by a nonlinear Boltzmann equation. The ways of its linearization sometimes seem to be not unique. We argue that there is actually a unique way to obtain a linear equation for the fluctuations. In the present paper we treat as an example an analytical theory of nonequilibrium shot noise in a diffusive conductor under the space charge limited regime. Our approach is compared with that of Schomerus, Mishchenko and Beenakker [Phys. Rev. B 60, 5839 (1999)]. We find some difference between the present theory and the approach of their paper and discuss a possible origin of the difference. We believe that it is related to the fundamentals of the theory of fluctuation phenomena in a nonequilibrium electron gas.
The temperature dependence of the electrical transport of a individual tin oxide nanobelt was measured, in darkness, from 400 to 5K. We found four intrinsic electrical transport mechanisms through the nanobelt. It starts with Thermal-Activation Conduction between 400 and 314K, Nearest-Neighbor Hopping conduction between 268 and 115K, and Variable Range Hopping conduction below 58K, with a crossover from the 3D-Mott to the 3D-Efros-Shklovskii regime at 16K. We claim that this sequence reveal the three-dimensional nature of the electrical transport in the SnO2 nanobelts, even they are expected to behave as one-dimensional systems.
When light is absorbed by a semiconductor, photoexcited charge carriers enhance the absorption of far-infrared radiation due to intraband transitions. We observe the opposite behavior in monolayer graphene, a zero-gap semiconductor with linear dispersion. By using time domain terahertz (THz) spectroscopy in conjunction with optical pump excitation, we observe a reduced absorption of THz radiation in photoexcited graphene. The measured spectral shape of the differential optical conductivity exhibits non-Drude behavior. We discuss several possible mechanisms that contribute to the observed low-frequency non-equilibrium optical response of graphene.
We report measurements of current noise in single- and multi-layer graphene devices. In four single-layer devices, including a p-n junction, the Fano factor remains constant to within +/-10% upon varying carrier type and density, and averages between 0.35 and 0.38. The Fano factor in a multi-layer device is found to decrease from a maximal value of 0.33 at the charge-neutrality point to 0.25 at high carrier density. These results are compared to theoretical predictions for shot noise in ballistic and disordered graphene.