Ring structures fabricated from HgTe/HgCdTe quantum wells have been used to study Aharonov-Bohm type conductance oscillations as a function of Rashba spin-orbit splitting strength. We observe non-monotonic phase changes indicating that an additional phase factor modifies the electron wave function. We associate these observations with the Aharonov-Casher effect. This is confirmed by comparison with numerical calculations of the magneto-conductance for a multichannel ring structure within the Landauer-Buttiker formalism.
In a recent Letter, Bergsten and co-authors have studied the resistance oscillations with gate voltage and magnetic field in arrays of semiconductor rings and interpreted the oscillatory magnetic field dependence as Altshuler-Aronov-Spivak (AAS) oscillations and oscillatory dependence on gate voltage as the Aharonov-Casher (AC) effect. This Comment shows that Bergsten and co-authors incorrectly identified AAS effect as a source of resistance oscillations in magnetic field, that spin relaxation in their experimental setting is strong enough to destroy oscillatory effects of spin origin, and that the oscillations are caused by changes in carrier density and the Fermi energy by gate, and are unrelated to spin.
We suggest a system in which the amplitude of macroscopic flux tunneling can be modulated via the Aharonov-Casher effect. The system is an rf-SQUID with the Josephson junction replaced by a Bloch transistor -- two junctions separated by a small superconducting island on which the charge can be induced by an external gate voltage. When the Josephson coupling energies of the junctions are equal and the induced charge is q=e, destructive interference between tunneling paths brings the flux tunneling rate to zero. The device may also be useful as a qubit for quantum computation.
We have observed the effect of the Aharonov-Casher (AC) interference on the spectrum of a superconducting system containing a symmetric Cooper pair box (CPB) and a large inductance. By varying the charge $n_{g}$ induced on the CPB island, we observed oscillations of the device spectrum with the period $Delta n_{g}=2e$. These oscillations are attributed to the charge-controlled AC interference between the fluxon tunneling processes in the CPB Josephson junctions. Total suppression of the tunneling (complete destructive interference) has been observed for the charge $n_{g}=e(2n+1)$. The CPB in this regime represents the $4pi$-periodic Josephson element, which can be used for the development of the parity-protected superconducting qubits.
A neutral quantum particle with magnetic moment encircling a static electric charge acquires a quantum mechanical phase (Aharonov-Casher effect). In superconducting electronics the neutral particle becomes a fluxon that moves around superconducting islands connected by Josephson junctions. The full understanding of this effect in systems of many junctions is crucial for the design of novel quantum circuits. Here we present measurements and quantitative analysis of fluxon interference patterns in a six Josephson junction chain. In this multi-junction circuit the fluxon can encircle any combination of charges on five superconducting islands, resulting in a complex pattern. We compare the experimental results with predictions of a simplified model that treats fluxons as independent excitations and with the results of the full diagonalization of the quantum problem. Our results demonstrate the accuracy of the fluxon interference description and the quantum coherence of these arrays.
A mesoscopic ring subject to the Rashba spin-orbit interaction and sequentially coupled to an interacting quantum dot, in the presence of Aharonov-Bohm flux, is proposed as a flux tunable tunneling diode. The analysis of the conductance by means of the nonequilibrium Greens function technique, shows an intrinsic bistability at varying the Aharonov-Bohm flux when 2U > pi Gamma, U being the charging energy on the dot and Gamma the effective resonance width. The bistability properties are discussed in connection with spin-switch effects and logical storage device applications.