No Arabic abstract
We study the influence of the phase relaxation process on Hall resistance and spin Hall current of a mesoscopic two-dimensional (2D) four-terminal Hall cross-bar with or without Rashba spin-orbit interaction (SOI) in a perpendicular uniform magnetic field. We find that the plateaus of the Hall resistance with even number of edge states can survive for very strong phase relaxation when the system size becomes much longer than the phase coherence length. On the other hand, the odd integer Hall resistance plateaus arising from the SOI are easily destroyed by the weak phase relaxation during the competition between the magnetic field and the SOI which delocalize the edge states. In addition, we have also studied the transverse spin Hall current and found that it exhibits resonant behavior whenever the Fermi level crosses the Landau band of the system. The phase relaxation process weakens the resonant spin Hall current and enhances the non-resonant spin Hall current.
Conductivity of Integer Quantum Hall Effect (IQHE) may be expressed as the topological invariant composed of the two - point Green function. Such a topological invariant is known both for the case of homogeneous systems with intrinsic Anomalous Quantum Hall Effect (AQHE) and for the case of IQHE in the inhomogeneous systems. In the latter case we may speak, for example, of the AQHE in the presence of elastic deformations and of the IQHE in presence of magnetic field. The topological invariant for the general case of inhomogeneous systems is expressed through the Wigner transformed Green functions and contains Moyal product. When it is reduced to the expression for the IQHE in the homogeneous systems the Moyal product is reduced to the ordinary one while the Wigner transformed Green function (defined in phase space) is reduced to the Green function in momentum space. Originally the mentioned above topological representation has been derived for the non - interacting systems. We demonstrate that in a wide range of different cases in the presence of interactions the Hall conductivity is given by the same expression, in which the noninteracting two - point Green function is substituted by the complete two - point Green function with the interactions taken into account. Several types of interactions are considered including the contact four - fermion interactions, Yukawa and Coulomb interactions. We present the complete proof of this statement up to the two loops, and argue that the similar result remains to all orders of perturbation theory. It is based on the incorporation of Wigner - Weyl calculus to the perturbation theory. We, therefore, formulate Feynmann rules of diagram technique in terms of the Wigner transformed propagators.
The search for topologically non-trivial states of matter has become an important goal for condensed matter physics. Recently, a new class of topological insulators has been proposed. These topological insulators have an insulating gap in the bulk, but have topologically protected edge states due to the time reversal symmetry. In two dimensions the helical edge states give rise to the quantum spin Hall (QSH) effect, in the absence of any external magnetic field. Here we review a recent theory which predicts that the QSH state can be realized in HgTe/CdTe semiconductor quantum wells. By varying the thickness of the quantum well, the band structure changes from a normal to an inverted type at a critical thickness $d_c$. We present an analytical solution of the helical edge states and explicitly demonstrate their topological stability. We also review the recent experimental observation of the QSH state in HgTe/(Hg,Cd)Te quantum wells. We review both the fabrication of the sample and the experimental setup. For thin quantum wells with well width $d_{QW}< 6.3$ nm, the insulating regime shows the conventional behavior of vanishingly small conductance at low temperature. However, for thicker quantum wells ($d_{QW}> 6.3$ nm), the nominally insulating regime shows a plateau of residual conductance close to $2e^2/h$. The residual conductance is independent of the sample width, indicating that it is caused by edge states. Furthermore, the residual conductance is destroyed by a small external magnetic field. The quantum phase transition at the critical thickness, $d_c= 6.3$ nm, is also independently determined from the occurrence of a magnetic field induced insulator to metal transition.
Topological phases of matter have revolutionized quantum engineering. Implementing a curved space Dirac equation solver based on the quantum Lattice Boltzmann method, we study the topological and geometrical transport properties of a Mobius graphene ribbon. In the absence of a magnetic field, we measure a quantum spin-Hall current on the graphene strip, originating from topology and curvature, whereas a quantum Hall current is not observed. In the torus geometry a Hall current is measured. Additionally, a specific illustration of the equivalence between the Berry and Ricci curvature is presented through a travelling wave-packet around the Mobius band.
We present a formalism that simultaneously incorporates the effect of quantum tunneling and spin diffusion on spin Hall magnetoresistance observed in normal metal/ferromagnetic insulator bilayers (such as Pt/YIG) and normal metal/ferromagnetic metal bilayers (such as Pt/Co), in which the angle of magnetization influences the magnetoresistance of the normal metal. In the normal metal side the spin diffusion is known to affect the landscape of the spin accumulation caused by spin Hall effect and subsequently the magnetoresistance, while on the ferromagnet side the quantum tunneling effect is detrimental to the interface spin current which also affects the spin accumulation. The influence of generic material properties such as spin diffusion length, layer thickness, interface coupling, and insulating gap can be quantified in a unified manner, and experiments that reveal the quantum feature of the magnetoresistance are suggested.
We report on the influence of voltmeters on measurements of the longitudinal resistance in the quantum Hall effect regime. We show that for typical input resistances for standard digital lock-in amplifiers the longitudinal resistance can show a non-zero minimum which might be mistaken for parallel conduction in the doping layer. In contrast to a real parallel conduction the effect disappears when either the current source and ground contact are swapped or the polarity of the B-field is changed. We discuss the influence of input capacitances and stray capacitances on the measurement. The data demonstrates the influence of the voltmeter input impedance on the longitudinal resistance measurement.