An Anderson-Fano Resonance and Shake-Up Processes in the Magneto-Photoluminescence of a Two-Dimensional Electron System

We report an anomalous doublet structure and low-energy satellite in the magneto-photoluminescence spectra of a two-dimensional electron system. The doublet structure moves to higher energy with increasing magnetic field and is most prominent at odd filling factors 5 and 3. The lower-energy satellite peak tunes to lower energy for increasing magnetic field between filling factor 6 and 2. These features occur at energies below the fundamental band of recombination originating from the lowest Landau level and display striking magnetic field and temperature dependence that indicates a many-body origin. Drawing on a recent theoretical description of Hawrylak and Potemski, we show that distinct mechanisms are responsible for each feature.Comment: 14 pages including 5 figures. To appear in the April 15th edition of Phy. Rev. B. rapid com

Tunable Negative Differential Resistance controlled by Spin Blockade in Single Electron Transistors

We demonstrate a tunable negative differential resistance controlled by spin blockade in single electron transistors. The single electron transistors containing a few electrons and spin polarized source and drain contacts were formed in GaAs/GaAlAs heterojunctions using metallic gates. Coulomb blockade measurements performed as a function of applied source-drain bias, electron number and magnetic field reveal well defined regimes where a decrease in the current is observed with increasing bias. We establish that the origin of the negative differential regime is the spin-polarized detection of electrons combined with a long spin relaxation time in the dot. These results indicate new functionalities that may be utilized in nano-spintronic devices in which the spin state is electro-statically controlled via the electron occupation number.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Optical properties of charged quantum dots doped with a single magnetic impurity

We present a microscopic theory of the optical properties of self-assembled quantum dots doped with a single magnetic manganese (Mn) impurity and containing a controlled number of electrons. The single-particle electron and heavy-hole electronic shells are described by two-dimensional harmonic oscillators. The electron-electron, electron-hole Coulomb as well as the short-range electron spin-Mn spin and hole spin-Mn spin contact exchange interactions are included. The electronic states of the photo-excited electron-hole-Mn complex and of the final electron-Mn complex are expanded in a finite number of configurations and the full interacting Hamiltonian is diagonalized numerically. The emission spectrum is predicted as a function of photon energy for a given number of electrons and different number of confined electronic quantum dot shells. We show how emission spectra allow to identify the number of electronic shells, the number of electrons populating these shells and, most importantly, their spin. We show that electrons not interacting directly with the spin of Mn ion do so via electron-electron interactions. This indirect interaction is a strong effect even when Mn impurity is away from the quantum dot center.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figure

Theory of electronic properties and quantum spin blockade in a gated linear triple quantum dot with one electron spin each

We present a theory of electronic properties and the spin blockade phenomena in a gated linear triple quantum dot. Quadruple points where four different charge configurations are on resonance, particularly involving (1,1,1) configuration, are considered. In the symmetric case, the central dot is biased to higher energy and a single electron tunnels through the device when (1,1,1) configuration is resonant with (1,0,1),(2,0,1),(1,0,2) configurations. The electronic properties of a triple quantum dot are described by a Hubbard model containing two orbitals in the two unbiased dots and a single orbital in the biased dot. The transport through the triple quantum dot molecule involves both singly and doubly occupied configurations and necessitates the description of the (1,1,1) configuration beyond the Heisenberg model. Exact eigenstates of the triple quantum dot molecule with up to three electrons are used to compute current assuming weak coupling to the leads and non-equilibrium occupation of quantum molecule states obtained from the rate equation. The intra-molecular relaxation processes due to acoustic phonons and cotunneling with the leads are included, and are shown to play a crucial role in the spin blockade effect. We find a quantum interference-based spin blockade phenomenon at low source-drain bias and a distinct spin blockade due to a trap state at higher bias. We also show that, for an asymmetric quadruple point with (0,1,1),(1,1,1,),(0,2,1),(0,1,2) configurations on resonance, the spin blockade is analogous to the spin blockade in a double quantum dot

Spin relaxation in a two-electron quantum dot

We discuss the rate of relaxation of the total spin in the two-electron droplet in the vicinity of the magnetic field driven singlet-triplet transition. The total spin relaxation is attributed to spin-orbit and electron-phonon interactions. The relaxation process is found to depend on the spin of ground and excited states. This asymmetry is used to explain puzzles in recent high source-drain transport experiments.Comment: 9 pages in the PDF format, 1 figur

Magnetism and correlations in fractionally filled degenerate shells of graphene quantum dots

When an electron is confined to a triangular atomic thick layer of graphene [1-5] with zig-zag edges, its energy spectrum collapses to a shell of degenerate states at the Fermi level (Dirac point) [6-9]. The degeneracy is proportional to the edge size and can be made macroscopic. This opens up the possibility to design a strongly correlated electronic system as a function of fractional filling of the zero-energy shell, in analogy to the fractional quantum Hall effect in a quasi-two-dimensional electron gas[10], but without the need for a high magnetic field. In this work we show that electronic correlations, beyond the Hubbard model[6,7] and mean-field density functional theory (DFT) [7,8] play a crucial role in determining the nature of the ground state and the excitation spectrum of triangular graphene quantum dots as a function of dot size and filling fraction of the shell of zero-energy states. The interactions are treated by a combination of DFT, tight-binding, Hartree-Fock and configuration interaction methods (TB-HF-CI) and include all scattering and exchange terms within second nearest neighbors as well as interaction with metallic gate. We show that a half filled charge neutral shell leads to full spin polarization of the island but this magnetic moment is completely destroyed by the addition of a single electron, in analogy to the effect of skyrmions on the quantum Hall ferromagnet [11-14] and spin depolarization in electrostatically defined semiconductor quantum dots[15-18]. The depolarization of the ground state is predicted to result in blocking of current through a graphene quantum dot due to spin blockade (SB) [18].Comment: v2: minor corrections, new forma

Herzberg Circuit and Berry's Phase in Chirality-based Coded Qubit in a Triangular Triple Quantum Dot

We present a theoretical proposal for the Herzberg circuit and controlled accumulation of Berry's phase in a chirality-based coded qubit in a triangular triple quantum dot molecule with one electron spin each. The qubit is encoded in the two degenerate states of a three spin complex with total spin $S=1/2$. Using a Hubbard and Heisenberg model the Herzberg circuit encircling the degeneracy point is realized by adiabatically tuning the successive on-site energies of quantum dots and tunnel couplings across a pair of neighbouring dots. It is explicitly shown that encircling the degeneracy point leads to the accumulation of the geometrical Berrys phase. We show that only triangular but not linear quantum dot molecule allows for the generation of Berry's phase and we discuss a protocol to detect this geometrical phase

The Collapse of the Spin-Singlet Phase in Quantum Dots

We present experimental and theoretical results on a new regime in quantum dots in which the filling factor 2 singlet state is replaced by new spin polarized phases. We make use of spin blockade spectroscopy to identify the transition to this new regime as a function of the number of electrons. The key experimental observation is a reversal of the phase in the systematic oscillation of the amplitude of Coulomb blockade peaks as the number of electrons is increased above a critical number. It is found theoretically that correlations are crucial to the existence of the new phases.Comment: REVTeX4, 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in PR

Valence holes as Luttinger spinor based qubits in quantum dots

We present a theory of valence holes as Luttinger spinor based qubits in p-doped self-assembled quantum dots within the 4-band $k\cdot p$ formalism. The two qubit levels are identified with the two chiralities of the doubly degenerate ground state. We show that single qubit operations can be implemented with static magnetic field applied along the $z$ and $x$ directions, acting analogously to the $\hat{\sigma}_z$ and $\hat{\sigma}_x$ operators in the qubit subspace respectively. The coupling of two dots and hence the double qubit operations are shown to be sensitive to the orientation of the two quantum dots. For vertical qubit arrays, there exists an optimal qubit separation suitable for the voltage control of qubit-qubit interactions