An experimental protocol which allows to perform conductance spectroscopy on organic molecules at low temperatures (T~30 K) has been developed. This extends the method of mechanically controlled break junctions which has recently demonstrated to be suitable to contact single molecules at room temperature. The conductance data obtained at low T with a conjugated sample molecule show a highly improved data quality with a higher stability, narrower linewidth and substantially reduced noise. Thus the comparability of experimental data with other measurements as well as with theoretical simulations is considerably improved.
We have performed thermal conductance measurements on individual single crystalline silicon suspended nanowires. The nanowires (130 nm thick and 200 nm wide) are fabricated by e-beam lithography and suspended between two separated pads on Silicon On Insulator (SOI) substrate. We measure the thermal conductance of the phonon wave guide by the 3 method. The cross-section of the nanowire approaches the dominant phonon wavelength in silicon which is of the order of 100 nm at 1K. Above 1.3K the conductance behaves as T3, but a deviation is measured at the lowest temperature which can be attributed to the reduced geometry.
The electron transport through the parabolic quantum wire placed in longitudinal magnetic field in the presence of the system of short-range impurities inside the wire is investigated. Using approach based on the zero-range potential theory we obtained an exact formula for the transmission coefficient of the electron through the wire that allows to calculate such the transport characteristics as the conductance and differential thermopower. The dependencies of conductance and thermopower on the chemical potential and magnetic field are investigated. The effect of elastic scattering due to short-range impurities on low-temperature conductance and thermopower is studied. It was shown that the character of the electron transport essentially depends on the position of the every scattering center. The presence even isolated impurity leads to destruction of conductance quantization. In some cases it is possible that thermopower can change the sign in dependence on chemical potential and magnetic field.
We report on the realization of a high sensitivity RF noise measurement scheme to study small current fluctuations of mesoscopic systems at milliKelvin temperatures. The setup relies on the combination of an interferometric ampli- fication scheme and a quarter-wave impedance transformer, allowing the mea- surement of noise power spectral densities with GHz bandwith up to five orders of magnitude below the amplifier noise floor. We simultaneously measure the high frequency conductance of the sample by derivating a portion of the signal to a microwave homodyne detection. We describe the principle of the setup, as well as its implementation and calibration. Finally, we show that our setup allows to fully characterize a subnanosecond on-demand single electron source. More generally, its sensitivity and bandwith make it suitable for applications manipulating single charges at GHz frequencies.
The ability to transport energy is a fundamental property of the two-dimensional Dirac fermions in graphene. Electronic thermal transport in this system is relatively unexplored and is expected to show unique fundamental properties and to play an important role in future applications of graphene, including opto-electronics, plasmonics, and ultra-sensitive bolometry. Here we present measurements of bipolar, electron-diffusion and electron-phonon thermal conductances, and infer the electronic specific heat, with a minimum value of 10 $k_{rm{B}}$ ($10^{-22}$ JK$^{-1}$) per square micron. We test the validity of the Wiedemann-Franz law and find the Lorenz number equals $1.32times(pi^2/3)(k_{rm{B}}/e)^2$. The electron-phonon thermal conductance has a temperature power law $T^2$ at high doping levels, and the coupling parameter is consistent with recent theory, indicating its enhancement by impurity scattering. We demonstrate control of the thermal conductance by electrical gating and by suppressing the diffusion channel using superconducting electrodes, which sets the stage for future graphene-based single microwave photon detection.
The quest for non-Abelian quasiparticles has inspired decades of experimental and theoretical efforts, where the scarcity of direct probes poses a key challenge. Among their clearest signatures is a thermal Hall conductance with quantized half-integer value in natural units $ pi^2 k_B^2 T /3 h$ ($T$ is temperature, $h$ the Planck constant, $k_B$ the Boltzmann constant). Such a value was indeed recently observed in a quantum-Hall system and a magnetic insulator. We show that a non-topological thermal metal phase that forms due to quenched disorder may disguise as a non-Abelian phase by well approximating the trademark quantized thermal Hall response. Remarkably, the quantization here improves with temperature, in contrast to fully gapped systems. We provide numerical evidence for this effect and discuss its possible implications for the aforementioned experiments.