Dark states in the magnetotransport through triple quantum dots

We consider the transport through a system of three coupled quantum dots in a perpendicular magnetic field. At zero field, destructive interference can trap an electron in a dark state -- a coherent superposition of dot states that completely blocks current flow. The magnetic field can disrupt this interference giving rise to oscillations in the current and its higher-order statistics as the field is increased. These oscillations have a period of either the flux-quantum or half the flux-quantum, depending on the dot geometry. We give results for the stationary current and for the shotnoise and skewness at zero and finite frequency.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

Supercurrent in Nb/InAs-Nanowire/Nb Josephson junctions

We report on the fabrication and measurements of planar mesoscopic Josephson junctions formed by InAs nanowires coupled to superconducting Nb terminals. The use of Si-doped InAs-nanowires with different bulk carrier concentrations allowed to tune the properties of the junctions. We have studied the junction characteristics as a function of temperature, gate voltage, and magnetic field. In junctions with high doping concentrations in the nanowire Josephson supercurrent values up to 100\,nA are found. Owing to the use of Nb as superconductor the Josephson coupling persists at temperatures up to 4K. In all junctions the critical current monotonously decreased with the magnetic field, which can be explained by a recently developed theoretical model for the proximity effect in ultra-small Josephson junctions. For the low-doped Josephson junctions a control of the critical current by varying the gate voltage has been demonstrated. We have studied conductance fluctuations in nanowires coupled to superconducting and normal metal terminals. The conductance fluctuation amplitude is found to be about 6 times larger in superconducting contacted nanowires. The enhancement of the conductance fluctuations is attributed to phase-coherent Andreev reflection as well as to the large number of phase-coherent channels due to the large superconducting gap of the Nb electrodes.Comment: 5 Figure, submitted to Journal of Applied Physic

Dephasing due to electron-electron interaction in a diffusive ring

We study the effect of the electron-electron interaction on the weak localization correction of a ring pierced by a magnetic flux. We compute exactly the path integral giving the magnetoconductivity for an isolated ring. The results are interpreted in a time representation. This allows to characterize the nature of the phase coherence relaxation in the ring. The nature of the relaxation depends on the time regime (diffusive or ergodic) but also on the harmonics $n$ of the magnetoconductivity. Whereas phase coherence relaxation is non exponential for the harmonic $n=0$, it is always exponential for harmonics $n\neq0$. Then we consider the case of a ring connected to reservoirs and discuss the effect of connecting wires. We recover the behaviour of the harmonics predicted recently by Ludwig & Mirlin for a large perimeter (compared to the Nyquist length). We also predict a new behaviour when the Nyquist length exceeds the perimeter.Comment: 21 pages, RevTeX4, 8 eps figures; version of 10/2006 : eqs.(100-102) of section V.C correcte

Weak localization in multiterminal networks of diffusive wires

We study the quantum transport through networks of diffusive wires connected to reservoirs in the Landauer-B\"uttiker formalism. The elements of the conductance matrix are computed by the diagrammatic method. We recover the combination of classical resistances and obtain the weak localization corrections. For arbitrary networks, we show how the cooperon must be properly weighted over the different wires. Its nonlocality is clearly analyzed. We predict a new geometrical effect that may change the sign of the weak localization correction in multiterminal geometries.Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX, 4 figures, 8 eps file

Optically tuned dimensionality crossover in photocarrier-doped SrTiO3_3: onset of weak localization

We report magnetotransport properties of photogenerated electrons in undoped SrTiO$_3$ single crystals under ultraviolet illumination down to 2 K. By tuning the light intensity, the steady state carrier density can be controlled, while tuning the wavelength controls the effective electronic thickness by modulating the optical penetration depth. At short wavelengths, when the sheet conductance is close to the two-dimensional Mott minimum conductivity we have observed critical behavior characteristic of weak localization. Negative magnetoresistance at low magnetic field is highly anisotropic, indicating quasi-two-dimensional electronic transport. The high mobility of photogenerated electrons in SrTiO$_3$ allows continuous tuning of the effective electronic dimensionality by photoexcitation.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

Aharonov-Casher oscillations of spin current through a multichannel mesoscopic ring

The Aharonov-Casher (AC) oscillations of spin current through a 2D ballistic ring in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit interaction and external magnetic field has been calculated using the semiclassical path integral method. For classically chaotic trajectories the Fokker-Planck equation determining dynamics of the particle spin polarization has been derived. On the basis of this equation an analytic expression for the spin conductance has been obtained taking into account a finite width of the ring arms carrying large number of conducting channels. It was shown that the finite width results in a broadening and damping of spin current AC oscillations. We found that an external magnetic field leads to appearance of new nondiagonal components of the spin conductance, allowing thus by applying a rather weak magnetic field to change a direction of the transmitted spin current polarization.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure

Chaotic scattering through coupled cavities

We study the chaotic scattering through an Aharonov-Bohm ring containing two cavities. One of the cavities has well-separated resonant levels while the other is chaotic, and is treated by random matrix theory. The conductance through the ring is calculated analytically using the supersymmetry method and the quantum fluctuation effects are numerically investigated in detail. We find that the conductance is determined by the competition between the mean and fluctuation parts. The dephasing effect acts on the fluctuation part only. The Breit-Wigner resonant peak is changed to an antiresonance by increasing the ratio of the level broadening to the mean level spacing of the random cavity, and the asymmetric Fano form turns into a symmetric one. For the orthogonal and symplectic ensembles, the period of the Aharonov-Bohm oscillations is half of that for regular systems. The conductance distribution function becomes independent of the ensembles at the resonant point, which can be understood by the mode-locking mechanism. We also discuss the relation of our results to the random walk problem.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures; minor change

Measuring overlaps in mesoscopic spin glasses via conductance fluctuations

We consider the electonic transport in a mesoscopic metallic spin glasses. We show that the distribution of overlaps between spin configurations can be inferred from the reduction of the conductance fluctuations by the magnetic impurities. Using this property, we propose new experimental protocols to probe spin glasses directly through their overlaps

Magnetic-field asymmetry of nonlinear mesoscopic transport

We investigate departures of the Onsager relations in the nonlinear regime of electronic transport through mesoscopic systems. We show that the nonlinear current--voltage characteristic is not an even function of the magnetic field due only to the magnetic-field dependence of the screening potential within the conductor. We illustrate this result for two types of conductors: A quantum Hall bar with an antidot and a chaotic cavity connected to quantum point contacts. For the chaotic cavity we obtain through random matrix theory an asymmetry in the fluctuations of the nonlinear conductance that vanishes rapidly with the size of the contacts.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Published versio

Time-Reversal Symmetry and Universal Conductance Fluctuations in a Driven Two-Level System

In the presence of time-reversal symmetry, quantum interference gives strong corrections to the electric conductivity of disordered systems. The self-interference of an electron wavefunction traveling time-reversed paths leads to effects such as weak localization and universal conductance fluctuations. Here, we investigate the effects of broken time-reversal symmetry in a driven artificial two-level system. Using a superconducting flux qubit, we implement scattering events as multiple Landau-Zener transitions by driving the qubit periodically back and forth through an avoided crossing. Interference between different qubit trajectories give rise to a speckle pattern in the qubit transition rate, similar to the interference patterns created when coherent light is scattered off a disordered potential. Since the scattering events are imposed by the driving protocol, we can control the time-reversal symmetry of the system by making the drive waveform symmetric or asymmetric in time. We find that the fluctuations of the transition rate exhibit a sharp peak when the drive is time-symmetric, similar to universal conductance fluctuations in electronic transport through mesoscopic systems