Light-emitting current of electrically driven single-photon sources

The time-dependent tunnelling current arising from the electron-hole recombination of exciton state is theoretically studied using the nonequilibrium Green's function technique and the Anderson model with two energy levels. The charge conservation and gauge invariance are satisfied in the tunnelling current. Apart from the classical capacitive charging and discharging behavior, interesting oscillations superimpose on the tunnelling current for the applied rectangular pulse voltage.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure

Modulation of the dephasing time for a magnetoplasma in a quantum well

We investigate the femtosecond kinetics of optically excited 2D magneto-plasma. We calculate the femtosecond dephasing and relaxation kinetics of the laser pulse excited magneto-plasma due to bare Coulomb potential scattering, because screening is under these conditions of minor importance. By taking into account four Landau subbands in both the conduction band and the valence band, we are now able to extend our earlier study [Phys. Rev. B {\bf 58}, 1998,in print (see also cond-mat/9808073] to lower magnetic fields. We can also fix the magnetic field and change the detuning to further investigate the carrier density-dependence of the dephasing time. For both cases, we predict strong modulation in the dephasing time.Comment: RevTex, 3 figures, to be published in Solid. Stat. Commu

Non-equilibrium current and electron pumping in nanostructures

We discuss a numerical method to study electron transport in mesoscopic devices out of equilibrium. The method is based on the solution of operator equations of motion, using efficient Chebyshev time propagation techniques. Its peculiar feature is the propagation of operators backwards in time. In this way the resource consumption scales linearly with the number of states used to represent the system. This allows us to calculate the current for non-interacting electrons in large one-, two- and three-dimensional lead-device configurations with time-dependent voltages or potentials. We discuss the technical aspects of the method and present results for an electron pump device and a disordered system, where we find transient behaviour that exists for a very long time and may be accessible to experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Contribution to the International Conference on Magnetism (ICM) 2009 in Karlsruh

The anomalous Hall conductivity due to the vector spin chirality

We study theoretically the anomalous Hall effect due to the vector spin chirality carried by the local spins in the $s$-$d$ model. We will show that the vector spin chirality indeed induces local Hall effect in the presence of the electron spin polarization, while the global Hall effect vanishes if electron transport is homogeneous. This anomalous Hall effect can be interpreted in terms of the rotational component of the spin current associated with the vector chirality.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure

Twisted-light-induced optical transitions in semiconductors: Free-carrier quantum kinetics

We theoretically investigate the interband transitions and quantum kinetics induced by light carrying orbital angular momentum, or twisted light, in bulk semiconductors. We pose the problem in terms of the Heisenberg equations of motion of the electron populations, and inter- and intra-band coherences. Our theory extends the free-carrier Semiconductor Bloch Equations to the case of photo-excitation by twisted light. The theory is formulated using cylindrical coordinates, which are better suited to describe the interaction with twisted light than the usual cartesian coordinates used to study regular optical excitation. We solve the equations of motion in the low excitation regime, and obtain analytical expressions for the coherences and populations; with these, we calculate the orbital angular momentum transferred from the light to the electrons and the paramagnetic and diamagnetic electric current densities.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

Non-equilibrium GW approach to quantum transport in nano-scale contacts

Correlation effects within the GW approximation have been incorporated into the Keldysh non-equilibrium transport formalism. We show that GW describes the Kondo effect and the zero-temperature transport properties of the Anderson model fairly well. Combining the GW scheme with density functional theory and a Wannier function basis set, we illustrate the impact of correlations by computing the I-V characteristics of a hydrogen molecule between two Pt chains. Our results indicate that self-consistency is fundamental for the calculated currents, but that it tends to wash out satellite structures in the spectral function.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Nonequilibrium Green's Function Approach to Phonon Transport in Defective Carbon Nanotubes

We have developed a new theoretical formalism for phonon transport in nanostructures using the nonequilibrium phonon Green's function technique and have applied it to thermal conduction in defective carbon nanotubes. The universal quantization of low-temperature thermal conductance in carbon nanotubes can be observed even in the presence of local structural defects such as vacancies and Stone-Wales defects, since the long wavelength acoustic phonons are not scattered by local defects. At room temperature, however, thermal conductance is critically affected by defect scattering since incident phonons are scattered by localized phonons around the defects. We find a remarkable change from quantum to classical features for the thermal transport through defective CNTs with increasing temperature.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let

Proposal for a correlation induced spin-current polarizer

We propose a spin polarizer device composed of a quantum dot connected to the spin polarized leads. The spin control of the current flowing through the device is entirely due to the Coulomb interactions present inside the dot. We show that the initial polarization present in the source lead can be reverted or suppressed just by manipulating the gate voltage acting on the dot, the presence of the external magnetic field is not required. The influence of the temperature and finite bias on the efficiency of the current spin switching effect is also discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, title changed, rearranged figures, one reference added, discussion extension, accepted for Phys. Rev.

Parasitic pumping currents in an interacting quantum dot

We analyze the charge and spin pumping in an interacting dot within the almost adiabatic limit. By using a non-equilibrium Green's function technique within the time-dependent slave boson approximation, we analyze the pumped current in terms of the dynamical constraints in the infinite-U regime. The results show the presence of parasitic pumping currents due to the additional phases of the constraints. The behavior of the pumped current through the quantum dot is illustrated in the spin-insensitive and in the spin-sensitive case relevant for spintronics applications