Persistent current noise and electron-electron interactions

We analyze fluctuations of persistent current (PC) produced by a charged quantum particle moving in a ring and interacting with a dissipative environment formed by diffusive electron gas. We demonstrate that in the presence of interactions such PC fluctuations persist down to zero temperature. In the case of weak interactions and/or sufficiently small values of the ring radius $R$ PC noise remains coherent and can be tuned by external magnetic flux $\Phi_x$ piercing the ring. In the opposite limit of strong interactions and/or large values of $R$ fluctuations in the electronic bath strongly suppress quantum coherence of the particle down to $T=0$ and induce incoherent $\Phi_x$-independent current noise in the ring which persists even at $\Phi_x=0$ when the average PC is absent.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

Electron-electron interactions in antidot-based Aharonov-Bohm interferometers

We present a microscopic picture of quantum transport in quantum antidots in the quantum Hall regime taking electron interactions into account. We discuss the edge state structure, energy level evolution, charge quantization and linear-response conductance as the magnetic field or gate voltage is varied. Particular attention is given to the conductance oscillations due to Aharonov-Bohm interference and their unexpected periodicity. To explain the latter we propose the mechanisms of scattering by point defects and Coulomb blockade tunneling. They are supported by self-consistent calculations in the Hartree approximation, which indicate pinning and correlation of the single-particle states at the Fermi energy as well as charge oscillation when antidot-bound states depopulate. We have also found interesting phenomena of anti-resonance reflection of the Fano type.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

Optical Conductivity of a Two-Dimensional Electron Liquid with Spin-Orbit Interaction

The interplay of electron-electron interactions and spin-orbit coupling leads to a new contribution to the homogeneous optical conductivity of the electron liquid. The latter is known to be insensitive to many-body effects for a conventional electron system with parabolic dispersion. The parabolic spectrum has its origin in the Galilean invariance which is broken by spin-orbit coupling. This opens up a possibility for the optical conductivity to probe electron-electron interactions. We analyze the interplay of interactions and spin-orbit coupling and obtain optical conductivity beyond RPA.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; final version, fig. 3 added, minor change

Electron-electron interactions and two-dimensional - two-dimensional tunneling

We derive and evaluate expressions for the dc tunneling conductance between interacting two-dimensional electron systems at non-zero temperature. The possibility of using the dependence of the tunneling conductance on voltage and temperature to determine the temperature-dependent electron-electron scattering rate at the Fermi energy is discussed. The finite electronic lifetime produced by electron-electron interactions is calculated as a function of temperature for quasiparticles near the Fermi circle. Vertex corrections to the random phase approximation substantially increase the electronic scattering rate. Our results are in an excellent quantitative agreement with experiment.Comment: Revtex style, 21 pages and 8 postscript figures in a separate file; Phys. Rev. B (in press

Effective electron-electron and electron-phonon interactions in the Hubbard-Holstein model

We investigate the interplay between the electron-electron and the electron-phonon interaction in the Hubbard-Holstein model. We implement the flow-equation method to investigate within this model the effect of correlation on the electron-phonon effective coupling and, conversely, the effect of phonons in the effective electron-electron interaction. Using this technique we obtain analytical momentum-dependent expressions for the effective couplings and we study their behavior for different physical regimes. In agreement with other works on this subject, we find that the electron-electron attraction mediated by phonons in the presence of Hubbard repulsion is peaked at low transferred momenta. The role of the characteristic energies involved is also analyzed.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figure