Current facilitation by plasmon resonances between parallel wires of finite length

The current voltage (IV) characteristics for perpendicular transport through two sequentially coupled wires of finite length is calculated analytically. The transport within a Coulomb blockade step is assisted by plasmon resonances that appear as steps in the IV characteristics with positions and heights depending on inter- and intrawire interactions. In particular, due to the interwire interactions, the peak positions shift to lower voltages in comparison to the noninteracting wires which reflects the facilitation of current by interactions. The interwire interactions are also found to enhance the thermally activated current.Comment: 5 pages, 1figur

Plasmon assisted transport through disordered array of quantum wires

Phononless plasmon assisted thermally activated transport through a long disordered array of finite length quantum wires is investigated analytically. Generically strong electron plasmon interaction in quantum wires results in a qualitative change of the temperature dependence of thermally activated resistance in comparison to phonon assisted transport. At high temperatures, the thermally activated resistance is determined by the Luttinger liquid interaction parameter of the wires.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, final version as publishe

Influence of disorder on the ferromagnetism in diluted magnetic semiconductors

Influence of disorder on the ferromagnetic phase transition in diluted (III,Mn)V semiconductors is investigated analytically. The regime of small disorder is addressed, and the enhancement of the critical temperature by disorder is found both in the mean field approximation and from the analysis of the zero temperature spin stiffness. Due to disorder, the spin wave fluctuations around the ferromagnetically ordered state acquire a finite mass. At large charge carrier band width, the spin wave mass squared becomes negative, signaling the breakdown of the ferromagnetic ground state and the onset of a noncollinear magnetic order.Comment: Replaced with revised version. 10 pages, 3 figure

Metal-insulator transition in vanadium dioxide nanobeams: probing sub-domain properties of strongly correlated materials

Many strongly correlated electronic materials, including high-temperature superconductors, colossal magnetoresistance and metal-insulator-transition (MIT) materials, are inhomogeneous on a microscopic scale as a result of domain structure or compositional variations. An important potential advantage of nanoscale samples is that they exhibit the homogeneous properties, which can differ greatly from those of the bulk. We demonstrate this principle using vanadium dioxide, which has domain structure associated with its dramatic MIT at 68 degrees C. Our studies of single-domain vanadium dioxide nanobeams reveal new aspects of this famous MIT, including supercooling of the metallic phase by 50 degrees C; an activation energy in the insulating phase consistent with the optical gap; and a connection between the transition and the equilibrium carrier density in the insulating phase. Our devices also provide a nanomechanical method of determining the transition temperature, enable measurements on individual metal-insulator interphase walls, and allow general investigations of a phase transition in quasi-one-dimensional geometry.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, original submitted in June 200

Flux-quantum-modulated Kondo conductance in a multielectron quantum dot

We investigate a lateral semiconductor quantum dot with a large number of electrons in the limit of strong coupling to the leads. A Kondo effect is observed and can be tuned in a perpendicular magnetic field. This Kondo effect does not exhibit Zeeman splitting. It shows a modulation with the periodicity of one flux quantum per dot area at low temperatures. The modulation leads to a novel, strikingly regular stripe pattern for a wide range in magnetic field and number of electrons.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Monte Carlo simulations of an impurity band model for III-V diluted magnetic semiconductors

We report the results of a Monte Carlo study of a model of (III,Mn)V diluted magnetic semiconductors which uses an impurity band description of carriers coupled to localized Mn spins and is applicable for carrier densities below and around the metal-insulator transition. In agreement with mean field studies, we find a transition to a ferromagnetic phase at low temperatures. We compare our results for the magnetic properties with the mean field approximation, as well as with experiments, and find favorable qualitative agreement with the latter. The local Mn magnetization below the Curie temperature is found to be spatially inhomogeneous, and strongly correlated with the local carrier charge density at the Mn sites. The model contains fermions and classical spins and hence we introduce a perturbative Monte Carlo scheme to increase the speed of our simulations.Comment: 17 pages, 24 figures, 2 table

Interference in interacting quantum dots with spin

We study spectral and transport properties of interacting quantum dots with spin. Two particular model systems are investigated: Lateral multilevel and two parallel quantum dots. In both cases different paths through the system can give rise to interference. We demonstrate that this strengthens the multilevel Kondo effect for which a simple two-stage mechanism is proposed. In parallel dots we show under which conditions the peak of an interference-induced orbital Kondo effect can be split.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure

Ferromagnetism in a dilute magnetic semiconductor -- Generalized RKKY interaction and spin-wave excitations

Carrier-mediated ferromagnetism in a dilute magnetic semiconductor has been studied using i) a single-impurity based generalized RKKY approach which goes beyond linear response theory, and ii) a mean-field-plus-spin-fluctuation (MF+SF) approach within a (purely fermionic) Hubbard-model representation of the magnetic impurities, which incorporates dynamical effects associated with finite frequency spin correlations in the ordered state. Due to a competition between the magnitude of the carrier spin polarization and its oscillation length scale, the ferromagnetic spin coupling is found to be optimized with respect to both hole doping concentration and impurity-carrier spin coupling energy $J$ (or equivalently $U$). The ferromagnetic transition temperature $T_c$, deteremined within the spin-fluctuation theory, corresponds closely with the observed $T_c$ values. Positional disorder of magnetic impurities causes significant stiffening of the high-energy magnon modes. We also explicitly study the stability/instability of the mean-field ferromagnetic state, which highlights the role of competing AF interactions causing spin twisting and noncollinear ferromagnetic ordering.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figure