We have fabricated and studied a ballistic one-dimensional p-type quantum wire using an undoped AlGaAs/GaAs heterostructure. The absence of modulation doping eliminates remote ionized impurity scattering and allows high mobilities to be achieved over a wide range of hole densities, and in particular, at very low densities where carrier-carrier interactions are strongest. The device exhibits clear quantized conductance plateaus with highly stable gate characteristics. These devices provide opportunities for studying spin-orbit coupling and interaction effects in mesoscopic hole systems in the strong interaction regime where rs > 10.
The presence of pronounced electronic correlations in one-dimensional systems strongly enhances Coulomb coupling and is expected to result in distinctive features in the Coulomb drag between them that are absent in the drag between two-dimensional systems. We review recent Fermi and Luttinger liquid theories of Coulomb drag between ballistic one-dimensional electron systems, and give a brief summary of the experimental work reported so far on one-dimensional drag. Both the Fermi liquid (FL) and the Luttinger liquid (LL) theory predict a maximum of the drag resistance R_D when the one-dimensional subbands of the two quantum wires are aligned and the Fermi wave vector k_F is small, and also an exponential decay of R_D with increasing inter-wire separation, both features confirmed by experimental observations. A crucial difference between the two theoretical models emerges in the temperature dependence of the drag effect. Whereas the FL theory predicts a linear temperature dependence, the LL theory promises a rich and varied dependence on temperature depending on the relative magnitudes of the energy and length scales of the systems. At higher temperatures, the drag should show a power-law dependence on temperature, $R_D ~ T^x$, experimentally confirmed in a narrow temperature range, where x is determined by the Luttinger liquid parameters. The spin degree of freedom plays an important role in the LL theory in predicting the features of the drag effect and is crucial for the interpretation of experimental results.
We study the Zeeman splitting in induced ballistic 1D quantum wires aligned along the [233] and [011] axes of a high mobility (311)A undoped heterostructure. Our data shows that the g-factor anisotropy for magnetic fields applied along the high symmetry [011] direction can be explained by the 1D confinement only. However when the magnetic field is along [233] there is an interplay between the 1D confinement and 2D crystal anisotropy. This is highlighted for the [233] wire by an unusual non-monotonic behavior of the g-factor as the wire is made narrower.
We report the observation of commensurability oscillations in an AlAs two-dimensional electron system where two conduction-band valleys with elliptical in-plane Fermi contours are occupied. The Fourier power spectrum of the oscillations shows two frequency components consistent with those expected for the Fermi contours of the two valleys. From an analysis of the spectra we deduce $m_l/m_t=5.2pm0.5$ for the ratio of the longitudinal and transverse electron effective masses.
We report on measurements of quantized conductance in gate-defined quantum point contacts in bilayer graphene that allow the observation of subband splittings due to spin-orbit coupling. The size of this splitting can be tuned from 40 to 80 $mu$eV by the displacement field. We assign this gate-tunable subband-splitting to a gap induced by spin-orbit coupling of Kane-Mele type, enhanced by proximity effects due to the substrate. We show that this spin-orbit coupling gives rise to a complex pattern in low perpendicular magnetic fields, increasing the Zeeman splitting in one valley and suppressing it in the other one. In addition, we observe the existence of a spin-polarized channel of 6 e$^2$/h at high in-plane magnetic field and of signatures of interaction effects at the crossings of spin-split subbands of opposite spins at finite magnetic field.
The adiabatic transport properties of U(1) invariant systems are determined by the dependence of the ground state energy on the twisted boundary condition. We examine a one-dimensional tight-binding model in the presence of a single defect and find that the ground state energy of the model shows a universal dependence on the twist angle that can be fully characterized by the transmission coefficient of the scattering by the defect. We identify resulting pathological behaviors of Drude weights in the large system size limit: (i) both the linear and nonlinear Drude weights depend on the twist angle and (ii) the $N$-th order Drude weight diverges proportionally to the $(N-1)$-th power of the system size. To clarify the physical implication of the divergence, we simulate the real-time dynamics of the tight-binding model under a static electric field and show that the divergence does not necessarily imply the large current. Furthermore, we address the relation between our results and the boundary conformal field theory.