545 research outputs found
Spin-orbit Scattering and the Kondo Effect
The effects of spin-orbit scattering of conduction electrons in the Kondo
regime are investigated theoretically. It is shown that due to time-reversal
symmetry, spin-orbit scattering does not suppress the Kondo effect, even though
it breaks spin-rotational symmetry, in full agreement with experiment. An
orbital magnetic field, which breaks time-reversal symmetry, leads to an
effective Zeeman splitting, which can be probed in transport measurements. It
is shown that, similar to weak-localization, this effect has anomalous magnetic
field and temperature dependence.Comment: 10 pages, RevTex, one postscript figure available on request from
[email protected]
Orbital Magnetism and Current Distribution of Two-Dimensional Electrons under Confining Potential
The spatial distribution of electric current under magnetic field and the
resultant orbital magnetism have been studied for two-dimensional electrons
under a harmonic confining potential V(\vecvar{r})=m \omega_0^2 r^2/2 in
various regimes of temperature and magnetic field, and the microscopic
conditions for the validity of Landau diamagnetism are clarified. Under a weak
magnetic field (\omega_c\lsim\omega_0, \omega_c being a cyclotron frequency)
and at low temperature (T\lsim\hbar\omega_0), where the orbital magnetic
moment fluctuates as a function of the field, the currents are irregularly
distributed paramagnetically or diamagnetically inside the bulk region. As the
temperature is raised under such a weak field, however, the currents in the
bulk region are immediately reduced and finally there only remains the
diamagnetic current flowing along the edge. At the same time, the usual Landau
diamagnetism results for the total magnetic moment. The origin of this dramatic
temperature dependence is seen to be in the multiple reflection of electron
waves by the boundary confining potential, which becomes important once the
coherence length of electrons gets longer than the system length. Under a
stronger field (\omega_c\gsim\omega_0), on the other hand, the currents in
the bulk region cause de Haas-van Alphen effect at low temperature as
T\lsim\hbar\omega_c. As the temperature gets higher (T\gsim\hbar\omega_c)
under such a strong field, the bulk currents are reduced and the Landau
diamagnetism by the edge current is recovered.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figure
Time Dependent Current Oscillations Through a Quantum Dot
Time dependent phenomena associated to charge transport along a quantum dot
in the charge quantization regime is studied. Superimposed to the Coulomb
blockade behaviour the current has novel non-linear properties. Together with
static multistabilities in the negative resistance region of the I-V
characteristic curve, strong correlations at the dot give rise to
self-sustained current and charge oscillations. Their properties depend upon
the parameters of the quantum dot and the external applied voltages.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; to appear in PR
Kondo resonances and Fano antiresonances in transport through quantum dots
The transmission of electrons through a non-interacting tight-binding chain
with an interacting side quantum dot (QD) is analized. When the Kondo effect
develops at the dot the conductance presents a wide minimum, reaching zero at
the unitary limit. This result is compared to the opposite behaviour found in
an embedded QD. Application of a magnetic field destroys the Kondo effect and
the conductance shows pairs of dips separated by the charging energy U. The
results are discussed in terms of Fano antiresonances and explain qualitatively
recent experimental results.Comment: 4 pages including 4 figure
Suppression of current in transport through parallel double quantum dots
We report our study of the I-V curves in the transport through the quantum
dot when an additional quantum dot lying in the Kondo regime is side-connected
to it. Due to the Kondo scattering off the effective spin on a side-connected
quantum dot the conductance is suppressed at low temperatures and at low
source-drain bias voltages. This zero-bias anomaly is understood as enhanced
Kondo scattering with decreasing temperature.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure
Spin-Orbit-Induced Magnetic Anisotropy for Impurities in Metallic Samples I. Surface Anisotropy
Motivated by the recent measurements of Kondo resistivity in thin films and
wires, where the Kondo amplitude is suppressed for thinner samples, the surface
anisotropy for magnetic impurities is studied. That anisotropy is developed in
those cases where in addition to the exchange interaction with the impurity
there is strong spin-orbit interaction for conduction electrons around the
impurity in the ballistic region. The asymmetry in the neighborhood of the
magnetic impurity exhibits the anisotropy axis which, in the case of a
plane surface, is perpendicular to the surface. The anisotropy energy is
for spin , and the anisotropy constant is
inversionally proportional to distance measured from the surface and
. Thus at low temperature the spin is frozen in a singlet or doublet of
lowest energy. The influence of that anisotropy on the electrical resistivity
is the subject of the following paper (part II).Comment: 28 pages, RevTeX (using epsfig), 8 eps figures included, submitted to
PR
Fano effect of a strongly interacting quantum dot in contact with superconductor
The physics of a system consisting of an Aharonov Bohm (AB) interferometer
containing a single level interacting quantum dot (QD) on one of its arms, and
attached to normal (N) and superconducting (S) leads is studied and elucidated.
Here the focus is directed mainly on N-AB-S junctions but the theory is capable
of studying S-AB-S junctions as well. The interesting physics comes into play
under the conditions that both the Kondo effect in the QD and the the Fano
effect are equally important.It is found the conductance of the junction is
suppressed as the Fano effect becomes more dominant.Comment: 4 pages, Talk to be given at the NATO Conference MQO, Bled, Slovenia
7-10 September 200
A gentle introduction to the functional renormalization group: the Kondo effect in quantum dots
The functional renormalization group provides an efficient description of the
interplay and competition of correlations on different energy scales in
interacting Fermi systems. An exact hierarchy of flow equations yields the
gradual evolution from a microscopic model Hamiltonian to the effective action
as a function of a continuously decreasing energy cutoff. Practical
implementations rely on suitable truncations of the hierarchy, which capture
nonuniversal properties at higher energy scales in addition to the universal
low-energy asymptotics. As a specific example we study transport properties
through a single-level quantum dot coupled to Fermi liquid leads. In
particular, we focus on the temperature T=0 gate voltage dependence of the
linear conductance. A comparison with exact results shows that the functional
renormalization group approach captures the broad resonance plateau as well as
the emergence of the Kondo scale. It can be easily extended to more complex
setups of quantum dots.Comment: contribution to Les Houches proceedings 2006, Springer styl
Percolation-type description of the metal-insulator transition in two dimensions
A simple non-interacting-electron model, combining local quantum tunneling
and global classical percolation (due to a finite dephasing time at low
temperatures), is introduced to describe a metal-insulator transition in two
dimensions. It is shown that many features of the experiments, such as the
exponential dependence of the resistance on temperature on the metallic side,
the linear dependence of the exponent on density, the scale of the
critical resistance, the quenching of the metallic phase by a parallel magnetic
field and the non-monotonic dependence of the critical density on a
perpendicular magnetic field, can be naturally explained by the model.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Flicker Noise Induced by Dynamic Impurities in a Quantum Point Contact
We calculate low-frequency noise (LFN) in a quantum point contact (QPC) which
is electrostatically defined in a 2D electron gas of a GaAs-AlGaAs
heterostructure. The conventional source of LFN in such systems are scattering
potentials fluctuating in time acting upon injected electrons. One can
discriminate between potentials of different origin -- noise may be caused by
the externally applied gate- and source-drain voltages, the motion of defects
with internal degrees of freedom close to the channel, electrons hopping
between localized states in the doped region, etc. In the present study we
propose a model of LFN based upon the assumption that there are many dynamic
defects in the surrounding of a QPC. A general expression for the
time-dependent current-current correlation function is derived and applied to a
QPC with quantized conductance. It is shown that the level of LFN is
significantly different at and between the steps in a plot of the conductance
vs. gate voltage. On the plateaus, the level of noise is found to be low and
strongly model-dependent. At the steps, LFN is much larger and only weakly
model-dependent. As long as the system is biased to be at a fixed position
relative the conductance step,Comment: 26 revtex APR 94-4
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