Pipeline model of a Fermi-sea electron pump

The use of a band offset between the two leads of an electron pump driven by a local oscillating voltage is shown to increase the pump current dramatically. The structure of the electron transmission suggests the existence of dominant inelastic channels which we call pipelines. This permits the formulation of a simple model that gives a physical account of the numerical results for a realistic device. A spectral analysis reveals the pump current to be carried by scattering states with initial energy deep within the Fermi sea and not at its surface, thereby rendering the effect insensitive to temperature. We show this is compatible with the current flowing near the Fermi surface in the leads.Comment: 6 pages in RevTex4 (beta4), 4 figures; status: accepted for publication reason for replacement: A more detailed discussion of the differences to Ref. [5] has been provided & new reference adde

Quasiclassical frustration

We study the dissipative properties of a harmonic oscillator subject to two independent heat baths, one of which couples to its position and the other one to its momentum. This model describes a large spin impurity in a ferromagnet. We find that some effects of the two heat baths partially cancel each other. Most notably, oscillations may remain underdamped for arbitrarily strong coupling. This effect is a direct consequence of the mutually conjugate character of position and momentum. For a single dissipative bath coupled linearly to both position and momentum, no underdamped regime is possible for strong coupling. The dynamics of purity loss for one and two wave packets is also investigated

Perturbative analysis of coherent quantum ratchets in cold atom systems

We present a perturbative study of the response of cold atoms in an optical lattice to a weak time- and space-asymmetric periodic driving signal. In the noninteracting limit, and for a finite set of resonant frequencies, we show how a coherent, long lasting ratchet current results from the interference between first and second order processes. In those cases, a suitable three-level model can account for the entire dynamics, yielding surprisingly good agreement with numerically exact results for weak and moderately strong driving.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure