Conductance of a Mott Quantum Wire

We consider transport through a one-dimensional conductor subject to an external periodic potential and connected to non-interacting leads (a "Mott quantum wire"). For the case of a strong periodic potential, the conductance is shown to jump from zero, for the chemical potential lying within the Mott-Hubbard gap, to the non-interacting value of 2e^2/h, as soon as the chemical potential crosses the gap edge. This behavior is strikingly different from that of an optical conductivity, which varies continuously with the carrier concentration. For the case of a weak potential, the perturbative correction to the conductance due to Umklapp scattering is absent away from half-filling.Comment: 4 pages, RevTex, 1 ps figure included; published versio

Quasi-Andreev reflection in inhomogeneous Luttinger liquids

Reflection of charge excitations at the step in the interaction strength in a Luttinger liquid can be of the Andreev type, even if the interactions are purely repulsive. The region with stronger repulsion plays the role of a normal metal in a normal-metal /superconductor junction, whereas the region with weaker repulsion plays the role of a superconductor. It is shown that this quasi-Andreev reflection leads to a number of proximity-like effects, including the local enhancement (suppression) of superconducting fluctuations on the quasi-normal (quasi-superconducting) side of the step, significant modification of the local density of states, as well as others. The observable consequences of these proximity effects are analyzed for the case of single- and two-particle tunneling from a normal-metal or superconducting tip into an inhomogeneous Luttinger-liquid wire.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures (eps

Neuronavigation in the Percutaneous Treatment of Trigeminal Neuralgia: Technical note

Objective: To describe neuronavigation-guided percutaneous radiofrequency thermocoagulation in the treatment of trigeminal neuralgia.Methods: Neuronavigation guided percutaneous radiofrequency thermocoagulation of the Gasser ganglion was used in nine patients with trigeminal neuralgia who developed resistance to drugs used in the treatment of TN or have had adverse effects due to drug toxicity. The age of the patients was between 62 and 78 years. Results: All patients had immediate pain relief after thermocoagulation guided by neuronavigation. Neuronavigation allowed visualization of instrument position in relation to target and the related anatomical structures. The technique helped preoperative planning of the optimal trajectory for needle insertion. There were no complications of the procedure.Conclusion: Image guided percutaneous thermocoagulation in the treatment of trigeminal neuralgia is a safe and promising procedure. The technique has reduced the risk of postoperative complications caused by “hunting” of the foramen ovale.&nbsp

Anomalous Thermal Transport in Quantum Wires

We study thermal transport in a one-dimensional quantum wire, connected to reservoirs. Despite of the absence of electron backscattering, interactions in the wire strongly influence thermal transport. Electrons propagate with unitary transmission through the wire and electric conductance is not affected. Energy, however, is carried by bosonic excitations (plasmons) which suffer from scattering even on scales much larger than the Fermi wavelength. If the electron density varies randomly, plasmons are localized and {\em charge-energy separation} occurs. We also discuss the effect of plasmon-plasmon interaction using Levinson's theory of nonlocal heat transport.Comment: replaced with published versio

Short--range impurity in the vicinity of a saddle point and the levitation of the 2D delocalized states in a magnetic field

The effect of a short--range impurity on the transmission through a saddle--point potential for an electron, moving in a strong magnetic field, is studied. It is demonstrated that for a random position of an impurity and random sign of its potential the impurity--induced mixing of the Landau levels diminishes {\em on average} the transmission coefficient. This results in an upward shift (levitation) of the energy position of the delocalized state in a smooth potential. The magnitude of the shift is estimated. It increases with decreasing magnetic field $B$ as $B^{-4}$.Comment: LaTeX, 20 page

Topological Phase Diagram of a Two-Subband Electron System

We present a phase diagram for a two-dimensional electron system with two populated subbands. Using a gated GaAs/AlGaAs single quantum well, we have mapped out the phases of various quantum Hall states in the density-magnetic filed plane. The experimental phase diagram shows a very different topology from the conventional Landau fan diagram. We find regions of negative differential Hall resistance which are interpreted as preliminary evidence of the long sought reentrant quantum Hall transitions. We discuss the origins of the anomalous topology and the negative differential Hall resistance in terms of the Landau level and subband mixing.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Quantifying the levitation picture of extended states in lattice models

The behavior of extended states is quantitatively analyzed for two dimensional lattice models. A levitation picture is established for both white-noise and correlated disorder potentials. In a continuum limit window of the lattice models we find simple quantitative expressions for the extended states levitation, suggesting an underlying universal behavior. On the other hand, these results point out that the Quantum Hall phase diagrams may be disorder dependent.Comment: 5 pages, submitted to PR

Levitation of quantum Hall critical states in a lattice model with spatially correlated disorder

The fate of the current carrying states of a quantum Hall system is considered in the situation when the disorder strength is increased and the transition from the quantum Hall liquid to the Hall insulator takes place. We investigate a two-dimensional lattice model with spatially correlated disorder potentials and calculate the density of states and the localization length either by using a recursive Green function method or by direct diagonalization in connection with the procedure of level statistics. From the knowledge of the energy and disorder dependence of the localization length and the density of states (DOS) of the corresponding Landau bands, the movement of the current carrying states in the disorder--energy and disorder--filling-factor plane can be traced by tuning the disorder strength. We show results for all sub-bands, particularly the traces of the Chern and anti-Chern states as well as the peak positions of the DOS. For small disorder strength $W$ we recover the well known weak levitation of the critical states, but we also reveal, for larger $W$, the strong levitation of these states across the Landau gaps without merging. We find the behavior to be similar for exponentially, Gaussian, and Lorentzian correlated disorder potentials. Our study resolves the discrepancies of previously published work in demonstrating the conflicting results to be only special cases of a general lattice model with spatially correlated disorder potentials. To test whether the mixing between consecutive Landau bands is the origin of the observed floating, we truncate the Hilbert space of our model Hamiltonian and calculate the behavior of the current carrying states under these restricted conditions.Comment: 10 pages, incl. 13 figures, accepted for publication in PR

Quantum Hall - insulator transitions in lattice models with strong disorder

We report results of numerical studies of the integer quantum Hall effect in a tight binding model on a two-dimensional square lattice with non-interacting electrons, in the presence of a random potential as well as a uniform magnetic field applied perpendicular to the lattice. We consider field magnitudes such that the area per flux quantum is commensurate with the lattice structure. Topological properties of the single electron wave functions are used to identify current carrying states that are responsible for the quantized Hall conductance. We study the interplay between the magnetic field and the disorder, and find a universal pattern with which the current carrying states are destroyed by increasing disorder strength, and the system driven into an insulating state. We also discuss how to interpolate results of lattice models to the continuum limit. The relationship to previous theoretical and experimental studies of quantum Hall-insulator transitions in strongly disordered systems at low magnetic fields is discussed.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figure