No Arabic abstract
We predict the formation of giant vortices in quasi-two-dimensional quantum dots at high magnetic fields, i.e., in rapidly rotating electron droplets. Our numerical results of quantum dots confined by a flat, anharmonic potential show ground states where vortices are accumulated in the center of the dot, thereby leading to large cores in the electron and current densities. The phenomenon is analogous to what was recently found in rotating Bose-Einstein condensates. The giant-vortex states leave measurable signatures in the ground-state energetics. The conditions for the giant-vortex formation as well as the internal structure of the vortex cores are discussed.
The rotation of a quantum liquid induces vortices to carry angular momentum. When the system is composed of multiple components that are distinguishable from each other, vortex cores in one component may be filled by particles of the other component, and coreless vortices form. Based on evidence from computational methods, here we show that the formation of coreless vortices occurs very similarly for repulsively interacting bosons and fermions, largely independent of the form of the particle interactions. We further address the connection to the Halperin wave functions of non-polarized quantum Hall states.
The main theme of this review is the many-body physics of vortices in quantum droplets of bosons or fermions, in the limit of small particle numbers. Systems of interest include cold atoms in traps as well as electrons confined in quantum dots. When set to rotate, these in principle very different quantum systems show remarkable analogies. The topics reviewed include the structure of the finite rotating many-body state, universality of vortex formation and localization of vortices in both bosonic and fermionic systems, and the emergence of particle-vortex composites in the quantum Hall regime. An overview of the computational many-body techniques sets focus on the configuration interaction and density-functional methods. Studies of quantum droplets with one or several particle components, where vortices as well as coreless vortices may occur, are reviewed, and theoretical as well as experimental challenges are discussed.
We argue that the magnetic susceptibility data, Refs. 1-3, for the low-density two-dimensional (2D) silicon-based electron gas indicate that magnetically active electrons are localised in spin-droplets. The droplets exist in both the insulating and metallic phases, and interact ferromagnetically, forming an effective 2D Heisenberg ferromagnet. Comparing the data with known analytical and numerical results for a 2D Heisenberg ferromagnet, we determine that JS^2 approx 0.6K, where S is the spin of the droplet and J is the ferromagnetic exchange constant between droplets. We further argue that most likely S=1 with four electrons occupying each droplet on average. We discuss the dependence of the magnetic susceptibility and the specific heat on the external magnetic field, which follows from the model, and hence we suggest further experimental tests of the model.
Two-dimensional semiconductor quantum dots are studied in the the filling-factor range 2<v<3. We find both theoretical and experimental evidence of a collective many-body phenomenon, where a fraction of the trapped electrons form an incompressible spin-droplet on the highest occupied Landau level. The phenomenon occurs only when the number of electrons in the quantum dot is larger than ~30. We find the onset of the spin-droplet regime at v=5/2. This proposes a finite-geometry alternative to the Moore-Read-type Pfaffian state of the bulk two-dimensional electron gas. Hence, the spin-droplet formation may be related to the observed fragility of the v=5/2 quantum Hall state in narrow quantum point contacts.
We report thermopower ($S$) and electrical resistivity ($rho_{2DES}$) measurements in low-density (10$^{14}$ m$^{-2}$), mesoscopic two-dimensional electron systems (2DESs) in GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures at sub-Kelvin temperatures. We observe at temperatures $lesssim$ 0.7 K a linearly growing $S$ as a function of temperature indicating metal-like behaviour. Interestingly this metallicity is not Drude-like, showing several unusual characteristics: i) the magnitude of $S$ exceeds the Mott prediction valid for non-interacting metallic 2DESs at similar carrier densities by over two orders of magnitude; and ii) $rho_{2DES}$ in this regime is two orders of magnitude greater than the quantum of resistance $h/e^2$ and shows very little temperature-dependence. We provide evidence suggesting that these observations arise due to the formation of novel quasiparticles in the 2DES that are not electron-like. Finally, $rho_{2DES}$ and $S$ show an intriguing decoupling in their density-dependence, the latter showing striking oscillations and even sign changes that are completely absent in the resistivity.