24 research outputs found
Particle tunneling through a polarizable insulator
The tunneling probability between two leads connected by a molecule, a chain,
a film, or a bulk polarizable insulator is investigated within a model of an
electron tunneling from lead A to a state higher in energy, describing the
barrier, and from there to lead B. To describe the possibility of energy
exchange with excitations of the molecule or the insulator we couple the
intermediate state to a single oscillator or to a spectrum of these,
respectively. In the single-oscillator case we find for weak coupling that the
tunneling is weakly suppressed by a Debye-Waller-type factor. For stronger
coupling the oscillator gets 'stiff' and we observe a suppression of tunneling
since the effective barrier is increased. The probability for the electron to
excite the oscillator increases with the coupling. In the case of a film, or a
bulk barrier the behavior is qualitatively the same as in the single oscillator
case. An insulating chain, as opposed to a film or a bulk connecting the two
leads,shows an 'orthogonality catastrophe' similar to that of an electronic
transition in a Fermi gas.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur
Imaging of Low Compressibility Strips in the Quantum Hall Liquid
Using Subsurface Charge Accumulation scanning microscopy we image strips of
low compressibility corresponding to several integer Quantum Hall filling
factors. We study in detail the strips at Landau level filling factors
2 and 4. The observed strips appear significantly wider than predicted by
theory. We present a model accounting for the discrepancy by considering a
disorder-induced nonzero density of states in the cyclotron gap.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Charge occupancy of two interacting electrons on artificial molecules - exact results
We present exact solutions for two interacting electrons on an artificial
atom and on an artificial molecule made by one and two (single level) quantum
dots connected by ideal leads. Specifically, we calculate the accumulated
charge on the dots as function of the gate voltage, for various strengths of
the electron-electron interaction and of the hybridization between the dots and
the (one-dimensional) leads. With increasing of the (negative) gate voltage,
the accumulated charge in the two-electron ground state increases in gradual
steps from 0 to 1 and then to 2. The value 0 represents an "insulating" state,
where both electrons are bound to shallow states on the impurities. The value
of 1 corresponds to a "metal", with one electron localized on the dots and the
other extended on the leads. The value of 2 corresponds to another "insulator",
with both electrons strongly localized. The width of the "metallic" regime
diverges with strength of the electron-electron interaction for the single dot,
but remains very narrow for the double dot. These results are contrasted with
the simple Coulomb blockade picture.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure
Tunneling broadening of vibrational sidebands in molecular transistors
Transport through molecular quantum dots coupled to a single vibration mode
is studied in the case with strong coupling to the leads. We use an expansion
in the correlation between electrons on the molecule and electrons in the leads
and show that the tunneling broadening is strongly suppressed by the
combination of the Pauli principle and the quantization of the oscillator. As a
consequence the first Frank-Condon step is sharper than the higher order ones,
and its width, when compared to the bare tunneling strength, is reduced by the
overlap between the groundstates of the displaced and the non-displaced
oscillator.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures. PRB, in pres
Edge magnetoplasmons in periodically modulated structures
We present a microscopic treatment of edge magnetoplasmons (EMP's) within the
random-phase approximation for strong magnetic fields, low temperatures, and
filling factor , when a weak short-period superlattice potential is
imposed along the Hall bar. The modulation potential modifies both the spatial
structure and the dispersion relation of the fundamental EMP and leads to the
appearance of a novel gapless mode of the fundamental EMP. For sufficiently
weak modulation strengths the phase velocity of this novel mode is almost the
same as the group velocity of the edge states but it should be quite smaller
for stronger modulation. We discuss in detail the spatial structure of the
charge density of the renormalized and the novel fundamental EMP's.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure
Coulomb effects on the transport properties of quantum dots in strong magnetic field
We investigate the transport properties of quantum dots placed in strong
magnetic field using a quantum-mechanical ' approach based on the 2D
tight-binding Hamiltonian with direct Coulomb interaction and the
Landauer-B\"{u}ttiker (LB) formalism. The electronic transmittance and the Hall
resistance show Coulomb oscillations and also prove multiple addition
processes. We identify this feature as the 'bunching' of electrons observed in
recent experiments and give an elementary explanation in terms of spectral
characteristics of the dot. The spatial distribution of the added electrons may
distinguish between edge and bulk states and it has specific features for
bunched electrons. The dependence of the charging energy on the number of
electrons is discussed for strong and vanishing magnetic field. The crossover
from the tunneling to quantum Hall regime is analyzed in terms of dot-lead
coupling.Comment: 17 pages,8 figures,Revtex,submitted to Physical Review
Current rectification by simple molecular quantum dots: an ab-initio study
We calculate a current rectification by molecules containing a conjugated
molecular group sandwiched between two saturated (insulating) molecular groups
of different length (molecular quantum dot) using an ab-initio non-equilibrium
Green's function method. In particular, we study S-(CH2)m-C10H6-(CH2)n-S
dithiol with Naphthalene as a conjugated central group. The rectification
current ratio ~35 has been observed at m = 2 and n = 10, due to resonant
tunneling through the molecular orbital (MO) closest to the electrode Fermi
level (lowest unoccupied MO in the present case). The rectification is limited
by interference of other conducting orbitals, but can be improved by e.g.
adding an electron withdrawing group to the naphthalene.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure
Shot noise in resonant tunneling through a zero-dimensional state with a complex energy spectrum
We investigate the noise properties of a GaAs/AlGaAs resonant tunneling
structure at bias voltages where the current characteristic is determined by
single electron tunneling. We discuss the suppression of the shot noise in the
framework of a coupled two-state system. For large bias voltages we observed
super-Poissonian shot noise up to values of the Fano factor .Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, accepted for Phys. Rev.
Formation of an Edge Striped Phase in Fractional Quantum Hall Systems
We have performed an exact diagonalization study of up to N=12 interacting
electrons on a disk at filling for both Coulomb and
short-range interaction for which Laughlin wave function is the exact solution.
For Coulomb interaction and we find persistent radial oscillations
in electron density, which are not captured by the Laughlin wave function. Our
results srongly suggest formation of a chiral edge striped phase in quantum
Hall systems. The amplitude of the charge density oscillations decays slowly,
perhaps as a square root of the distance from the edge; thus the spectrum of
edge excitations is likely to be affected.Comment: 4 pages, 3 Figs. include
Phonon effects in molecular transistors: Quantum and classical treatment
We present a comprehensive theoretical treatment of the effect of
electron-phonon interactions in molecular transistors, including both quantal
and classical limits and we study both equilibrated and out of equilibrium
phonons. We present detailed results for conductance, noise and phonon
distribution in two regimes. One involves temperatures large as compared to the
rate of electronic transitions on and off the dot; in this limit our approach
yields classical rate equations, which are solved numerically for a wide range
of parameters. The other regime is that of low temperatures and weak
electron-phonon coupling where a perturbative approximation in the Keldysh
formulation can be applied. The interplay between the phonon-induced
renormalization of the density of states on the quantum dot and the
phonon-induced renormalization of the dot-lead coupling is found to be
important. Whether or not the phonons are able to equilibrate in a time rapid
compared to the transit time of an electron through the dot is found to affect
the conductance. Observable signatures of phonon equilibration are presented.
We also discuss the nature of the low-T to high-T crossover.Comment: 20 pages, 19 figures. Minor changes, version accepted for publication
in Phys. Rev.