No Arabic abstract
We report experimental observation of an unexpectedly large thermopower in mesoscopic two-dimensional (2D) electron systems on GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures at sub-Kelvin temperatures and zero magnetic field. Unlike conventional non-magnetic high-mobility 2D systems, the thermopower in our devices increases with decreasing temperature below 0.3 K, reaching values in excess of 100 $mu$V/K, thus exceeding the free electron estimate by more than two orders of magnitude. With support from a parallel independent study of the local density of states, we suggest such a phenomenon to be linked to intrinsic localized states and many-body spin correlations in the system.
We investigate the basic charge and heat transport properties of charge neutral epigraphene at sub-kelvin temperatures, demonstrating nearly logarithmic dependence of electrical conductivity over more than two decades in temperature. Using graphenes sheet conductance as in-situ thermometer, we present a measurement of electron-phonon heat transport at mK temperatures and show that it obeys the $T^4$ dependence characteristic for clean two-dimensional conductor. Based on our measurement we predict the noise-equivalent power of $sim 10^{-22}~{rm W}/sqrt{{rm Hz}}$ of epigraphene bolometer at the low end of achievable temperatures.
We present thermopower $S$ and resistance $R$ measurements on GaAs-based mesoscopic two-dimensional electron gases (2DEGs) as functions of the electron density $n_s$. At high $n_s$ we observe good agreement between the measured $S$ and $S_{rm{MOTT}}$, the Mott prediction for a non-interacting metal. As $n_s$ is lowered, we observe a crossover from Mott-like behaviour to that where $S$ shows strong oscillations and even sign changes. Remarkably, there are absolutely no features in $R$ corresponding to those in $S$. In fact, $R$ is devoid of even any universal conductance fluctuations. A statistical analysis of the thermopower oscillations from two devices of dissimilar dimensions suggest a universal nature of the oscillations. We critically examine whether they can be mesoscopic fluctuations of the kind described by Lesovik and Khmelnitskii in Sov. Phys. JETP. textbf{67}, 957 (1988).
Unwanted fluctuations over time, in short, noise, are detrimental to device performance, especially for quantum coherent circuits. Recent efforts have demonstrated routes to utilizing magnon systems for quantum technologies, which are based on interfacing single magnons to superconducting qubits. However, the coupling of several components often introduces additional noise to the system, degrading its coherence. Researching the temporal behavior can help to identify the underlying noise sources, which is a vital step in increasing coherence times and the hybrid device performance. Yet, the frequency noise of the ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) has so far been unexplored. Here, we investigate such FMR frequency fluctuations of a YIG sphere down to mK-temperatures, and find them independent of temperature and drive power. This suggests that the measured frequency noise in YIG is dominated by so far undetermined noise sources, which properties are not consistent with the conventional model of two-level systems, despite their effect on the sample linewidth. Moreover, the functional form of the FMR frequency noise power spectral density (PSD) cannot be described by a simple power law. By employing time-series analysis, we find a closed function for the PSD that fits our observations. Our results underline the necessity of coherence improvements to magnon systems for useful applications in quantum magnonics.
For the realisation of scalable solid-state quantum-bit systems, spins in semiconductor quantum dots are promising candidates. A key requirement for quantum logic operations is a sufficiently long coherence time of the spin system. Recently, hole spins in III-V-based quantum dots were discussed as alternatives to electron spins, since the hole spin, in contrast to the electron spin, is not affected by contact hyperfine interaction with the nuclear spins. Here, we report a breakthrough in the spin coherence times of hole ensembles, confined in so called natural quantum dots, in narrow GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells at temperatures below 500 mK. Consistently, time-resolved Faraday rotation and resonant spin amplification techniques deliver hole-spin coherence times, which approach in the low magnetic field limit values above 70 ns. The optical initialisation of the hole spin polarisation, as well as the interconnected electron and hole spin dynamics in our samples are well reproduced using a rate equation model.
We examine the nature of the transitions between the normal and the superconducting branches of superconductor-graphene-superconductor Josephson junctions. We attribute the hysteresis between the switching (superconducting to normal) and retrapping (normal to superconducting) transitions to electron overheating. In particular, we demonstrate that the retrapping current corresponds to the critical current at an elevated temperature, where the heating is caused by the retrapping current itself. The superconducting gap in the leads suppresses the hot electron outflow, allowing us to further study electron thermalization by phonons at low temperatures ($T lesssim 1$K). The relationship between the applied power and the electron temperature was found to be $Ppropto T^3$, which we argue is consistent with cooling due to electron-phonon interactions.