Sliding of Electron Crystal of Finite Size on the Surface of Superfluid He-4 Confined in a Microchannel

We present a new study of the nonlinear transport of a two-dimensional electron crystal on the surface of liquid helium confined in a 10 micrometer-wide channel in which the effective length of the crystal can be varied from 10 to 215 micrometers. At low driving voltages, the moving electron crystal is strongly coupled to deformation of the liquid surface arising from resonant excitation of surface capillary waves, ripplons, while at higher driving voltages the crystal decouples from the deformation. We find strong dependence of the decoupling threshold of the driving electric field acting on the electrons, on the size of the crystal. In particular, the threshold electric field significantly decreases when the length of the crystal becomes shorter than 25 micrometers. We explain this effect as arising from weakening of surface deformations due to radiative loss of resonantly-excited ripplons from an electron crystal of finite size, and we account for the observed effect using an instructive analytical model.Comment: 5 figure

Dephasing of qubits by transverse low-frequency noise

We analyze the dissipative dynamics of a two-level quantum system subject to low-frequency, e.g. 1/f noise, motivated by recent experiments with superconducting quantum circuits. We show that the effect of transverse linear coupling of the system to low-frequency noise is equivalent to that of quadratic longitudinal coupling. We further find the decay law of quantum coherent oscillations under the influence of both low- and high-frequency fluctuations, in particular, for the case of comparable rates of relaxation and pure dephasing

Bistability and Hysteresis of Intersubband Absorption in Strongly Interacting Electrons on Liquid Helium

We study nonlinear inter-subband microwave absorption of electrons bound to the liquid helium surface. Already for a comparatively low radiation intensity, resonant absorption due to transitions between the two lowest subbands is accompanied by electron overheating. The overheating results in a significant population of higher subbands. The Coulomb interaction between electrons causes a shift of the resonant frequency, which depends on the population of the excited states and thus on the electron temperature $T_e$. The latter is determined experimentally from the electron photoconductivity. The experimentally established relationship between the frequency shift and $T_e$ is in reasonable agreement with the theory. The dependence of the shift on the radiation intensity introduces nonlinearity into the rate of the inter-subband absorption resulting in bistability and hysteresis of the resonant response. The hysteresis of the response explains the behavior in the regime of frequency modulation, which we observe for electrons on liquid $^3$He and which was previously seen for electrons on liquid $^4$He

Transport properties of a quasi-1D Wigner Solid on liquid helium confined in a microchannel with periodic potential

We present transport measurements in a quasi-1D system of surface electrons on liquid helium confined in a 101-$\mu$m long and 5-$\mu$m wide microchannel where an electrostatic potential with periodicity of $1$-$\mu$m along the channel is introduced. In particular, we investigate the influence of such a potential on the nonlinear transport of quasi-1D Wigner Solid (WS) by varying the amplitude of the periodic potential in a wide range. At zero and small values of amplitude, quasi-1D WS in microchannel shows expected features such as the Bragg-Cherenkov scattering of ripplons and reentrant melting. As the amplitude of potential increases, the above features are strongly suppressed. This behavior suggests loss of the long-range positional order in the electron system, which is reminiscent of the re-entrant melting behaviour due to the lateral confinement of WS in the channel

Unidirectional Charge Transport via Ripplonic Polarons in a Three-Terminal Microchannel Device

We study the transport of surface electrons on superfluid helium through a microchannel structure in which the charge flow splits into two branches, one flowing straight and one turned at 90°. According to Ohm’s law, an equal number of charges should flow into each branch. However, when the electrons are dressed by surface excitations (ripplons) to form polaronlike particles with sufficiently large effective mass, all the charge follows the straight path due to momentum conservation. This surface-wave induced transport is analogous to the motion of electrons coupled to surface acoustic waves in semiconductor 2DEGs

Photoresonance and conductivity of surface electrons on liquid ³He

Resonance variations of the in-plane conductivity of surface electrons (SEs) over liquid ³He induced by microwave (MW) radiation of a fixed frequency are experimentally and theoretically studied for low temperature scattering regimes (T < 0.5 K). The system was tuned to resonance by varying the amplitude of the vertical electric field which shifts the positions of SE Rydberg levels. The line-shape change and reversing of the sign of the effect are found to be opposite to that reported previously for weak vertical electric fields. A theoretical analysis of conductivity of the SE system heated due to decay of electrons excited to the second Rydberg level by the MW explains well the line-shape variations observed. It shows also that shifting the MW resonance into the range of weak vertical fields leads to important qualitative changes in the line-shape of SE conductivity which are in agreement with observations reported previously

Microwave Absorption of Surface-State Electrons on Liquid 3^3He

We have investigated the intersubband transitions of surface state electrons (SSE) on liquid $^3$He induced by microwave radiation at temperatures from 1.1 K down to 0.01 K. Above 0.4 K, the transition linewidth is proportional to the density of $^3$He vapor atoms. This proportionality is explained well by Ando's theory, in which the linewidth is determined by the electron - vapor atom scattering. However, the linewidth is larger than the calculation by a factor of 2.1. This discrepancy strongly suggests that the theory underestimates the electron - vapor atom scattering rate. At lower temperatures, the absorption spectrum splits into several peaks. The multiple peak structure is partly attributed to the spatial inhomogeneity of the static holding electric field perpendicular to the electron sheet.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, submitted to J. Phys. Soc. Jp