We study spin polarization in a split-gate quantum wire focusing on the effect of a realistic smooth potential due to remote donors. Electron interaction and spin effects are included within the density functional theory in the local spin density approximation. We find that depending on the electron density, the spin polarization exhibits qualitatively different features. For the case of relatively high electron density, when the Fermi energy EF exceeds a characteristic strength of a long-range impurity potential Vdonors, the density spin polarization inside the wire is practically negligible and the wire conductance is spin-degenerate. When the density is decreased such that EF approaches Vdonors, the electron density and conductance quickly become spin polarized. With further decrease of the density the electrons are trapped inside the lakes (droplets) formed by the impurity potential and the wire conductance approaches the pinch-off regime. We discuss the limitations of the density functional theory in the local spin density approximation in this regime and compare the obtained results with available experimental data.
Numerical calculations of anisotropic hopping transport based on the resistor network model are presented. Conductivity is shown to follow the stretched exponential dependence on temperature with exponents increasing from 1/4 to 1 as the wave functions become anisotropic and their localization length in the direction of charge transport decreases. For sufficiently strong anisotropy, this results in nearest- neighbor hopping at lowtemperatures due to the formation of a single conduction path, which adjusts in the planes where the wave functions overlap strongly. In the perpendicular direction, charge transport follows variable- range hopping, a behavior that agrees with experimental data on organic semiconductors.
Quantum-mechanical calculations of electron magnetotransport in graphene Fabry-Perot interferometers are presented with a focus on the role of spatial structure of edge channels. For an interferometer that is made by removing carbon atoms, which is typically realized in nanolithography experiments, the constrictions are shown to cause strong interchannel scattering that establishes local equilibrium and makes the electron transport nonadiabatic. Nevertheless, two-terminal conductance reveals a common Aharonov-Bohm oscillation pattern, independent of crystallographic orientation, which is accompanied by single-particle states that sweep through the Fermi energy for the edge channels circulating along the physical boundary of the device. The interferometer constrictions host the localized states that might shorten the device or disrupt the oscillation pattern. For an interferometer that is created by electrostatic confinement, which is typically done in the split-gate experiments, electron transport is shown to be adiabatic with Aharonov-Bohm interference observable only at some ranges of magnetic field, with interfering path going through depletion regions. Interference visibility decays exponentially with temperature with a weaker dependence at low temperature.
Quantum-mechanical calculations of electron transport in ideal graphene nanoribbons show that the transport gap that is predicted by noninteracting theories vanishes if the long-range Coulomb interaction between electrons is taken into account. This is a result of charge screening with the lowest subband edge being pinned to the chemical potential. However, the transport gap reappears if a ribbon is connected to wider leads, which is typically realized in an experimental setup that is based on lithographically patterned graphene ribbons. The gap is determined by scattering at the lead-to-ribbon interface, which can already be captured by the noninteracting theory.& nbsp;(C) 2021 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
We calculate the conductivity sigma and the Seebeck coefficient S for the phonon-assisted hopping transport in conducting polymers poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) or PEDOT, experimentally studied by Bubnova et al. [J. Am. Chem. Soc. 134, 16456 (2012)]. We use the Monte Carlo technique as well as the semianalytical approach based on the transport energy concept. We demonstrate that both approaches show a good qualitative agreement for the concentration dependence of sigma and S. At the same time, we find that the semianalytical approach is not in a position to describe the temperature dependence of the conductivity. We find that both Gaussian and exponential density of states (DOS) reproduce rather well the experimental data for the concentration dependence of sigma and S giving similar fitting parameters of the theory. The obtained parameters correspond to a hopping model of localized quasiparticles extending over 2-3 monomer units with typical jumps over a distance of 3-4 units. The energetic disorder (broadening of the DOS) is estimated to be 0.1 eV. Using the Monte Carlo calculation we reproduce the activation behavior of the conductivity with the calculated activation energy close to the experimentally observed one. We find that for a low carrier concentration a number of free carriers contributing to the transport deviates strongly from the measured oxidation level. Possible reasons for this behavior are discussed. We also study the effect of the dimensionality on the charge transport by calculating the Seebeck coefficient and the conductivity for the cases of three-, two-, and one-dimensional motion.
We perform self-consistent quantum transport calculations in open quantum dots taking into account the effect of electron interaction. We demonstrate that, in the regime of the ultralow temperatures 2pkBT? (? being the mean-level spacing), the electron interaction strongly smears the conductance oscillations and thus significantly affects their statistics. Our calculations are in good quantitative agreement with the observed ultralow temperature statistics of Huibers et al.. Our findings question a conventional interpretation of the ultralow temperature saturation of the coherence time in open dots which is based on the noninteracting theories, where the agreement with the experiment is achieved by introducing additional phenomenological channels of dephasing. © 2007 The American Physical Society.
We present a microscopic picture of quantum transport in the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) interferometer taking into account the electron interaction within the Hartree and the spin density-functional theory approximations. We discuss the structure of the edge states for different number of Landau levels in the leads, their coupling to the states in the central island, and the formation of compressible/incompressible strips in the interferometer. Based on our results, we discuss the existing theories of the unexpected AB periodicity, which essentially rely on specific phenomenological models of the states and their coupling in the interferometer. Our work provides a basis for such theories, giving a detailed microscopic description of the propagating states and the global electrostatics in the system at hand. © 2008 The American Physical Society.
We present a systematic quantitative description of the magnetoconductance of split-gate quantum wires focusing on formation and evolution of the odd (spin-resolved) conductance plateaus. We start from the case of spinless electrons where the calculated magnetoconductance in the Hartree approximation shows the plateaus quantized in units of 2 e2 /h separated by transition regions, whose width grows as the magnetic field is increased. We show that the transition regions are related to the formation of the compressible strips in the middle of the wire occupied by electrons belonging to the highest (spin-degenerate) subband. Accounting for the exchange and correlation interactions within the spin density functional theory (DFT) leads to the lifting of the spin degeneracy and formation of the spin-resolved plateaus at odd values of e2 /h. The most striking feature of the magnetoconductance is that the width of the odd conductance steps in the spin DFT calculations is equal to the width of the transition intervals between the conductance steps in the Hartree calculations. A detailed analysis of the evolution of the Hartree and the spin DFT subband structure provides an explanation of this finding. Our calculations also reveal the effect of the collapse of the odd conductance plateaus for lower fields. We attribute this effect to the reduced screening efficiency in the confined (wire) geometry when the width of the compressible strip in the center becomes much smaller than the extent of the wave function. A detailed comparison to the experimental data demonstrates that the spin DFT calculations reproduce not only qualitatively but also quantitatively all the features observed in the experiment. This includes the dependence of the width of the odd and even plateaus on the magnetic field as well as the estimation of the subband index corresponding to the last resolved odd plateau in the magnetoconductance. © 2008 The American Physical Society.
We provide a systematic quantitative description of the structure of edge states and magnetosubband evolution in hard-wall quantum wires in the integer quantum Hall regime. Our calculations are based on the self-consistent Green's function technique where the electron and spin interactions are included within the density functional theory in the local spin density approximation. We analyze the evolution of the magnetosubband structure as magnetic field varies and show that it exhibits different features as compared to the case of a smooth confinement. In particular, in the hard-wall wire a deep and narrow triangular potential well (of the width of the magnetic length l(B)) is formed in the vicinity of the wire boundary. The wave functions are strongly localized in this well, which leads to an increase of the electron density near the edges. Because of the presence of this well, the subbands start to depopulate from the central region of the wire and remain pinned in the well region until they are eventually pushed up by increasing magnetic field. We also demonstrate that the spin polarization of electron density as a function of magnetic field shows a pronounced double-loop pattern that can be related to the successive depopulation of the magnetosubbands. In contrast to the case of a smooth confinement, in hard-wall wires compressible strips do not form in the vicinity of wire boundaries and spatial spin separation between spin-up and spin-down states near edges is absent.
We present a detailed comparison of the self-consistent calculations based on the Hartree-Fock and the spin density functional theory for a split-gate quantum wire in the IQH regime. We demonstrate that both approaches provide qualitatively (and, in most cases, quantitatively) similar results for the spin-resolved electron density, spin polarization, spatial spin separation at the edges and the effective g factor. Both approaches produce the same values of the magnetic fields corresponding to the successive subband depopulation and qualitatively similar evolution of the magnetosubbands. Quantitatively, however, the HF and the DFT subbands are different (even though the corresponding total electron densities are practically the same). In contrast to the HF approach, the DFT calculations predict much larger spatial spin separation near the wire edge for the low magnetic fields (when the compressible strips for spinless electrons are not formed yet). In the opposite limit of the large fields, the Hartree-Fock and the DFT approaches give very similar values for the spatial spin separation.
The conductance of a quantum wire containing a single magnetic barrier is studied numerically by means of the recursive Green's function technique. For sufficiently strong and localized barriers, Fano-type reflection resonances are observed close to the pinch-off regime. They are attributed to a magnetoelectric vortex-type quasibound state inside the magnetic barrier that interferes with an extended mode outside. We, furthermore, show that disorder can substantially modify the residual conductance around the pinch-off regime.
We have developed a mean-field first-principles approach for studying electronic and transport properties of low dimensional lateral structures in the integer quantum Hall regime. The electron interactions and spin effects are included within the spin density functional theory in the local density approximation where the conductance, the density, the effective potentials and the band structure are calculated on the basis of the Green's function technique. In this paper we present a systematic review of the major results obtained on the energetics, spin polarization, effective g factor, magnetosubband and edge state structure of split-gate and cleaved-edge overgrown quantum wires as well as on the conductance of quantum point contacts (QPCs) and open quantum dots. In particular, we discuss how the spin-resolved subband structure, the current densities, the confining potentials, as well as the spin polarization of the electron and current densities in quantum wires and antidots evolve when an applied magnetic field varies. We also discuss the role of the electron interaction and spin effects in the conductance of open systems focusing our attention on the 0.7 conductance anomaly in the QPCs. Special emphasis is given to the effect of the electron interaction on the conductance oscillations and their statistics in open quantum dots as well as to interpretation of the related experiments on the ultralow temperature saturation of the coherence time in open dots. © 2008 IOP Publishing Ltd.
We demonstrate that a split-gate quantum wire in the integer quantum Hall regime can exhibit electronic transport hysteresis for up- and down-sweeps of a magnetic field. This behavior is shown to be due to phase spin transitions between two different ground states with and without spatial spin polarization in the vicinity of the wire boundary. The observed effect has a many-body origin arising from an interplay between a confining potential, Coulomb interactions, and the exchange interaction. We also demonstrate and explain why the hysteretic behavior is absent for steep and smooth confining potentials and is present only for a limited range of intermediate confinement slopes. © 2007 The American Physical Society.