876 research outputs found
Decoherence and single electron charging in an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer
We investigate the temperature and voltage dependence of the quantum
interference in an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer using edge channels
in the integer quantum-Hall-regime. The amplitude of the interference fringes
is significantly smaller than expected from theory; nevertheless the functional
dependence of the visibility on temperature and bias voltage agrees very well
with theoretical predictions. Superimposed on the Aharonov-Bohm (AB)
oscillations, a conductance oscillation with six times smaller period is
observed. The latter depends only on gate voltage and not on the AB-phase, and
may be related to single electron charging.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, discussion of charging effect change
Counting Statistics and Dephasing Transition in an Electronic Mach-Zehnder Interferometer
It was recently suggested that a novel type of phase transition may occur in
the visibility of electronic Mach-Zehnder Interferometers. Here, we present
experimental evidence for the existence of this transition. The transition is
induced by strongly non-Gaussian noise that originates from the strong coupling
of a quantum point contact to the interferometer. We provide a transparent
physical picture of the effect, by exploiting a close analogy to the
neutrino-oscillations of particle physics. In addition, our experiment
constitutes a probe of the singularity of the elusive full counting statistics
of a quantum point contact.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures (+Supplement 8 pages, 9 figures
Edge Channel Interference Controlled by Landau Level Filling
We study the visibility of Aharonov-Bohm interference in an electronic
Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) in the integer quantum Hall regime. The
visibility is controlled by the filling factor and is observed only
between and 1.0, with an unexpected maximum near .
Three energy scales extracted from the temperature and voltage dependences of
the visibility change in a very similar way with the filling factor, indicating
that the different aspects of the interference depend sensitively on the local
structure of the compressible and incompressible strips forming the quantum
Hall edge channels.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, final version accepted for publication in Phys.
Rev.
Quantum Metallicity on the High-Field Side of the Superconductor-Insulator Transition
We investigate ultrathin superconducting TiN films, which are very close to
the localization threshold. Perpendicular magnetic field drives the films from
the superconducting to an insulating state, with very high resistance. Further
increase of the magnetic field leads to an exponential decay of the resistance
towards a finite value. In the limit of low temperatures, the saturation value
can be very accurately extrapolated to the universal quantum resistance h/e^2.
Our analysis suggests that at high magnetic fields a new ground state, distinct
from the normal metallic state occurring above the superconducting transition
temperature, is formed. A comparison with other studies on different materials
indicates that the quantum metallic phase following the magnetic-field-induced
insulating phase is a generic property of systems close to the disorder-driven
superconductor-insulator transition.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, published versio
Confinement and Quantization Effects in Mesoscopic Superconducting Structures
We have studied quantization and confinement effects in nanostructured
superconductors. Three different types of nanostructured samples were
investigated: individual structures (line, loop, dot), 1-dimensional (1D)
clusters of loops and 2D clusters of antidots, and finally large lattices of
antidots. Hereby, a crossover from individual elementary "plaquettes", via
clusters, to huge arrays of these elements, is realized. The main idea of our
study was to vary the boundary conditions for confinement of the
superconducting condensate by taking samples of different topology and, through
that, modifying the lowest Landau level E_LLL(H). Since the critical
temperature versus applied magnetic field T_c(H) is, in fact, E_LLL(H) measured
in temperature units, it is varied as well when the sample topology is changed
through nanostructuring. We demonstrate that in all studied nanostructured
superconductors the shape of the T_c(H) phase boundary is determined by the
confinement topology in a unique way.Comment: 28 pages, 19 EPS figures, uses LaTeX's aipproc.sty, contribution to
Euroschool on "Superconductivity in Networks and Mesoscopic Systems", held in
Siena, Italy (8-20 september 1997
Nonlocal vortex motion in mesoscopic amorphous Nb0.7Ge0.3 structures
We study nonlocal vortex transport in mesoscopic amorphous Nb0.7Ge0.3
samples. A dc current I is passed through a wire connected via a perpendicular
channel, of a length L= 2-5 um, with a pair of voltage probes where a nonlocal
response Vnl ~ I is measured. The maximum of Rnl=Vnl/I for a given temperature
occurs at an L-independent magnetic field and is proportional to 1/L. The
results are interpreted in terms of the dissipative vortex motion along the
channel driven by a remote current, and can be understood in terms of a simple
model.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Influence of the confinement geometry on surface superconductivity
The nucleation field for surface superconductivity, , depends on the
geometrical shape of the mesoscopic superconducting sample and is substantially
enhanced with decreasing sample size. As an example we studied circular,
square, triangular and wedge shaped disks. For the wedge the nucleation field
diverges as with decreasing angle () of
the wedge, where is the bulk upper critical field.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
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