365 research outputs found
Transport and Boundary Scattering in Confined Geometries: Analytical Results
We utilize a geometric argument to determine the effects of boundary
scattering on the carrier mean-free path in samples of various cross sections.
Analytic expressions for samples with rectangular and circular cross sections
are obtained. We also outline a method for incorporating these results into
calculations of the thermal conductivity.Comment: 35 pages, Late
Cerenkov generation of high-frequency confined acoustic phonons in quantum wells
We analyze the Cerenkov emission of high-frequency confined acoustic phonons
by drifting electrons in a quantum well. We find that the electron drift can
cause strong phonon amplification (generation). A general formula for the gain
coefficient, alpha, is obtained as a function of the phonon frequency and the
structure parameters. The gain coefficient increases sharply in the short-wave
region. For the example of a Si/SiGe/Si device it is shown that the
amplification coefficients of the order of hundreds of 1/cm can be achieved in
the sub-THz frequency range.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Submitted to AP
Plasmon-pole approximation for semiconductor quantum wire electrons
We develop the plasmon-pole approximation for an interacting electron gas
confined in a semiconductor quantum wire. We argue that the plasmon-pole
approximation becomes a more accurate approach in quantum wire systems than in
higher dimensional systems because of severe phase-space restrictions on
particle-hole excitations in one dimension. As examples, we use the
plasmon-pole approximation to calculate the electron self-energy due to the
Coulomb interaction and the hot-electron energy relaxation rate due to
LO-phonon emission in GaAs quantum wires. We find that the plasmon-pole
approximation works extremely well as compared with more complete many-body
calculations.Comment: 16 pages, RevTex, figures included. Also available at
http://www-cmg.physics.umd.edu/~lzheng
Determination of step--edge barriers to interlayer transport from surface morphology during the initial stages of homoepitaxial growth
We use analytic formulae obtained from a simple model of crystal growth by
molecular--beam epitaxy to determine step--edge barriers to interlayer
transport. The method is based on information about the surface morphology at
the onset of nucleation on top of first--layer islands in the submonolayer
coverage regime of homoepitaxial growth. The formulae are tested using kinetic
Monte Carlo simulations of a solid--on--solid model and applied to estimate
step--edge barriers from scanning--tunneling microscopy data on initial stages
of Fe(001), Pt(111), and Ag(111) homoepitaxy.Comment: 4 pages, a Postscript file, uuencoded and compressed. Physical Review
B, Rapid Communications, in press
Theoretical aspects of vertical and lateral manipulation of atoms
Using total energy calculations, based on interaction potentials from the
embedded atom method, we show that the presence of the tip not only lowers the
barrier for lateral diffusion of the adatom towards it, but also shifts the
corresponding saddle point. For a Cu adatom at a (100) microfacetted step on
Cu(111) this shift is 0.6 A. The effect of the tip geometry and shape on the
energetics of lateral manipulation was found to be subtle. In the case of
vertical manipulation of a Cu adatom on flat, stepped, and kinked Cu surfaces
we find an unusual but interesting result. It is found that as the tip
approaches the surface, it becomes easier to extract the adatom from the
stepped and kinked surfaces, as compared to the flat surface. This counter
intuitive result can be explained in terms of tip induced changes in the
bonding of the adatom to its low coordinated surroundings.Comment: 8figures, to appear in Surf. Sci., VAS10 proceeding
Irreversible nucleation in molecular beam epitaxy: From theory to experiments
Recently, the nucleation rate on top of a terrace during the irreversible
growth of a crystal surface by MBE has been determined exactly. In this paper
we go beyond the standard model usually employed to study the nucleation
process, and we analyze the qualitative and quantitative consequences of two
important additional physical ingredients: the nonuniformity of the
Ehrlich-Schwoebel barrier at the step-edge, because of the existence of kinks,
and the steering effects, due to the interaction between the atoms of the flux
and the substrate. We apply our results to typical experiments of second layer
nucleation.Comment: 11 pages. Table I corrected and one appendix added. To be published
in Phys. Rev. B (scheduled issue: 15 February 2003
Interaction Driven Quantum Hall Wedding cake-like Structures in Graphene Quantum Dots
Quantum-relativistic matter is ubiquitous in nature; however it is
notoriously difficult to probe. The ease with which external electric and
magnetic fields can be introduced in graphene opens a door to creating a
table-top prototype of strongly confined relativistic matter. Here, through a
detailed spectroscopic mapping, we provide a spatial visualization of the
interplay between spatial and magnetic confinement in a circular graphene
resonator. We directly observe the development of a multi-tiered "wedding
cake"-like structure of concentric regions of compressible/incompressible
quantum Hall states, a signature of electron interactions in the system.
Solid-state experiments can therefore yield insights into the behaviour of
quantum-relativistic matter under extreme conditions
The process of irreversible nucleation in multilayer growth. I. Failure of the mean-field approach
The formation of stable dimers on top of terraces during epitaxial growth is
investigated in detail. In this paper we focus on mean-field theory, the
standard approach to study nucleation. Such theory is shown to be unsuitable
for the present problem, because it is equivalent to considering adatoms as
independent diffusing particles. This leads to an overestimate of the correct
nucleation rate by a factor N, which has a direct physical meaning: in average,
a visited lattice site is visited N times by a diffusing adatom. The dependence
of N on the size of the terrace and on the strength of step-edge barriers is
derived from well known results for random walks. The spatial distribution of
nucleation events is shown to be different from the mean-field prediction, for
the same physical reason. In the following paper we develop an exact treatment
of the problem.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures. To appear in Phys. Rev.
The role of symmetry on interface states in magnetic tunnel junctions
When an electron tunnels from a metal into the barrier in a magnetic tunnel
junction it has to cross the interface. Deep in the metal the eigenstates for
the electron can be labelled by the point symmetry group of the bulk but around
the interface this symmetry is reduced and one has to use linear combinations
of the bulk states to form the eigenstates labelled by the irreducible
representations of the point symmetry group of the interface. In this way there
can be states localized at the interface which control tunneling. The
conclusions as to which are the dominant tunneling states are different from
that conventionally found.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, accepted in PRB, v2: reference 3 complete
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