63 research outputs found
Dissipative Currents in Superfluid 3He Weak Links
We calculate the current-pressure relation for pinholes connecting two
volumes of bulk superfluid 3He-B. The theory of multiple Andreev reflections,
adapted from superconducting weak links, leads to a nonlinear dependence of the
dc current on pressure bias. In arrays of pinholes one has to take into account
oscillations of the texture at the Josephson frequency. The associated
radiation of spin waves from the junction leads to an additional dissipative
current at small biases, in quantitative agreement with measurements.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; updated to the published versio
Role of electronic structure in photoassisted transport through atomic-sized contacts
We study theoretically quantum transport through laser-irradiated metallic
atomic-sized contacts. The radiation field is treated classically, assuming its
effect to be the generation of an ac voltage over the contact. We derive an
expression for the dc current and compute the linear conductance in one-atom
thick contacts as a function of the ac frequency, concentrating on the role
played by electronic structure. In particular, we present results for three
materials (Al, Pt, and Au) with very different electronic structures. It is
shown that, depending on the frequency and the metal, the radiation can either
enhance or diminish the conductance. This can be intuitively understood in
terms of the energy dependence of the transmission of the contacts in the
absence of radiation.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures; four new figures adde
Self heating and nonlinear current-voltage characteristics in bilayer graphene
We demonstrate by experiments and numerical simulations that the
low-temperature current-voltage characteristics in diffusive bilayer graphene
(BLG) exhibit a strong superlinearity at finite bias voltages. The
superlinearity is weakly dependent on doping and on the length of the graphene
sample. This effect can be understood as a result of Joule heating. It is
stronger in BLG than in monolayer graphene (MLG), since the conductivity of BLG
is more sensitive to temperature due to the higher density of electronic states
at the Dirac point.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, REVTeX 4.
Electron-phonon heat transfer in monolayer and bilayer graphene
We calculate the heat transfer between electrons to acoustic and optical
phonons in monolayer and bilayer graphene (MLG and BLG) within the
quasiequilibrium approximation. For acoustic phonons, we show how the
temperature-power laws of the electron-phonon heat current for BLG differ from
those previously derived for MLG and note that the high-temperature
(neutral-regime) power laws for MLG and BLG are also different, with a weaker
dependence on the electronic temperature in the latter. In the general case we
evaluate the heat current numerically. We suggest that a measurement of the
heat current could be used for an experimental determination of the
electron-acoustic phonon coupling constants, which are not accurately known.
However, in a typical experiment heat dissipation by electrons at very low
temperatures is dominated by diffusion, and we estimate the crossover
temperature at which acoustic-phonon coupling takes over in a sample with Joule
heating. At even higher temperatures optical phonons begin to dominate. We
study some examples of potentially relevant types of optical modes, including
in particular the intrinsic in-plane modes, and additionally the remote surface
phonons of a possible dielectric substrate.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures; moved details to appendixes, added discussion of
remote phonon
Length-dependent conductance and thermopower in single-molecule junctions of dithiolated oligophenylene derivatives
We study theoretically the length dependence of both conductance and
thermopower in metal-molecule-metal junctions made up of dithiolated
oligophenylenes contacted to gold electrodes. We find that while the
conductance decays exponentially with increasing molecular length, the
thermopower increases linearly as suggested by recent experiments. We also
analyze how these transport properties can be tuned with methyl side groups.
Our results can be explained by considering the level shifts due to their
electron-donating character as well as the tilt-angle dependence of conductance
and thermopower. Qualitative features of the substituent effects in our
density-functional calculations are explained using a tight-binding model. In
addition, we observe symmetry-related even-odd transmission channel
degeneracies as a function of molecular length.Comment: 7 pages, 9 figures; submitted to Phys. Rev.
Molecular dynamics study of the thermopower of Ag, Au, and Pt nanocontacts
Using molecular dynamics simulations of many junction stretching processes we
analyze the thermopower of silver (Ag), gold (Au), and platinum (Pt) atomic
contacts. In all cases we observe that the thermopower vanishes on average
within the standard deviation and that its fluctuations increase for decreasing
minimum cross-section of the junctions. However, we find a suppression of the
fluctuations of the thermopower for the s-valent metals Ag and Au, when the
conductance originates from a single, perfectly transmitting channel. Essential
features of the experimental results for Au, Ag, and copper (Cu) of Ludoph and
van Ruitenbeek [Phys. Rev. B 59, 12290 (1999)], as yet unaddressed by atomistic
studies, can hence be explained by considering the atomic and electronic
structure at the disordered narrowest constriction of the contacts. For the
multivalent metal Pt our calculations predict the fluctuations of the
thermopower to be larger by one order of magnitude as compared to Ag and Au,
and suppressions of the fluctuations as a function of the conductance are
absent.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figure
Ab initio study of charge transport through single oxygen molecules in atomic aluminum contacts
We present ab initio calculations of transport properties of atomic-sized
aluminum contacts in the presence of oxygen. The experimental situation is
modeled by considering a single oxygen atom (O) or one of the molecules O2 and
O3 bridging the gap between electrodes forming ideal, atomically sharp
pyramids. The transport characteristics are computed for these geometries with
increasing distances between the leads, simulating the opening of a break
junction. To facilitate comparison with experiments further, the vibrational
modes of the oxygen connected to the electrodes are studied. It is found that
in the contact regime the change of transport properties due to the presence of
oxygen is strong and should be detectable in experiments. All three types of
oxygen exhibit a comparable behavior in their vibrational frequencies and
conductances, which are well below the conductance of pure aluminum atomic
contacts. The conductance decreases for an increasing number of oxygen atoms.
In the tunneling regime the conductance decays exponentially with distance and
the decay length depends on whether or not oxygen is present in the junction.
This fact may provide a way to identify the presence of a gas molecule in
metallic atomic contacts.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures; added appendi
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