3 research outputs found
Saturation of dephasing time in mesoscopic devices produced by a ferromagnetic state
We consider an exchange model of itinerant electrons in a Heisenberg
ferromagnet and we assume that the ferromagnet is in a fully polarized state.
Using the Holstein-Primakoff transformation we are able to obtain a
boson-fermion Hamiltonian that is well-known in the interaction between light
and matter. This model describes the spontaneous emission in two-level atoms
that is the proper decoherence mechanism when the number of modes of the
radiation field is taken increasingly large, the vacuum acting as a reservoir.
In the same way one can see that the interaction between the bosonic modes of
spin waves and an itinerant electron produces decoherence by spin flipping with
a rate proportional to the size of the system. In this way we are able to show
that the experiments on quantum dots, described in D. K. Ferry et al. [Phys.
Rev. Lett. {\bf 82}, 4687 (1999)], and nanowires, described in D. Natelson et
al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 86}, 1821 (2001)], can be understood as the
interaction of itinerant electrons and an electron gas in a fully polarized
state.Comment: 10 pages, no figure. Changed title. Revised version accepted for
publication in Physical Review
Probe-configuration dependent dephasing in a mesoscopic interferometer
Dephasing in a ballistic four-terminal Aharonov-Bohm geometry due to charge
and voltage fluctuations is investigated. Treating two terminals as voltage
probes, we find a strong dependence of the dephasing rate on the probe
configuration in agreement with a recent experiment by Kobayashi et al. (J.
Phys. Soc. Jpn. 71, 2094 (2002)). Voltage fluctuations in the measurement
circuit are shown to be the source of the configuration dependence.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Two-species percolation and Scaling theory of the metal-insulator transition in two dimensions
Recently, a simple non-interacting-electron model, combining local quantum
tunneling via quantum point contacts and global classical percolation, has been
introduced in order to describe the observed ``metal-insulator transition'' in
two dimensions [1]. Here, based upon that model, a two-species-percolation
scaling theory is introduced and compared to the experimental data. The two
species in this model are, on one hand, the ``metallic'' point contacts, whose
critical energy lies below the Fermi energy, and on the other hand, the
insulating quantum point contacts. It is shown that many features of the
experiments, such as the exponential dependence of the resistance on
temperature on the metallic side, the linear dependence of the exponent on
density, the scale of the critical resistance, the quenching of the
metallic phase by a parallel magnetic field and the non-monotonic dependence of
the critical density on a perpendicular magnetic field, can be naturally
explained by the model.
Moreover, details such as the nonmonotonic dependence of the resistance on
temperature or the inflection point of the resistance vs. parallel magnetic are
also a natural consequence of the theory. The calculated parallel field
dependence of the critical density agrees excellently with experiments, and is
used to deduce an experimental value of the confining energy in the vertical
direction. It is also shown that the resistance on the ``metallic'' side can
decrease with decreasing temperature by an arbitrary factor in the degenerate
regime ().Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure