In this work we investigate the X-ray edge singularity problem realized in noninteracting quantum dots. We analytically calculate the exponent of the singularity in the absorption spectrum near the threshold and extend known analytical results to the whole parameter regime of local level detunings. Additionally, we highlight the connections to work distributions and to the Loschmidt echo.
We study electronic transport through a quantum dot in the Fermi-edge singularity regime, placing emphasis on its non-Markovian attributes. These are quantified by the behavior of current noise as well as trace-distance-based measure of non-Markovianity and found to be pronounced at low temperatures where the interplay of many-electron correlations and quantum coherence present in the system leads to significant quantum memory effects and non-Markovian dynamics.
We study the manifestation of the non-perturbative effects of interaction in sequential tunnelling between a quasi-one dimensional system of chiral quantum Hall edge channels and a multilevel quantum dot (QD). We use the formal scattering theory approach to the bosonization technique to present an alternative derivation of the Fermi-edge singularity (FES) effect and demonstrate the origin of its universality. This approach allows us to address, within the same framework, plasmon assisted sequential tunnelling to relatively large dots and investigate the interaction induced level broadening. Th…
We have investigated nucleation of merons in double quantum dots when a lateral distortion with a reflection symmetry is present in the confinement potential. We find that merons can nucleate both inside and at the edge of the dots. In addition to these merons, our results show that electron density modulations can be also present inside the dots. An edge meron appears to have approximately a half integer winding number.
We analyze the single particle states at the edges of disordered graphene quantum dots. We show that generic graphene quantum dots support a number of edge states proportional to circumference of the dot over the lattice constant. Our analytical theory agrees well with numerical simulations. Perturbations breaking electron-hole symmetry like next-nearest neighbor hopping or edge impurities shift the edge states away from zero energy but do not change their total amount. We discuss the possibility of detecting the edge states in an antidot array and provide an upper bound on the magnetic moment…
The mean-field Hubbard model is used to investigate the formation of the antiferromagnetic phase in hexagonal graphene rings with inner zigzag edges. The outer edge of the ring was taken to be either zigzag or armchair, and we found that both types of structures can have a larger antiferromagnetic interaction as compared with hexagonal dots. This difference could be partially ascribed to the larger number of zigzag edges per unit area in rings than in dots. Furthermore, edge states localized on the inner ring edge are found to hybridize differently than the edge states of dots, which results i…
We theoretically investigate phosphorene zigzag nanorribons as a platform for constriction engineering. In the presence of a constriction at the upper edge, quantum confinement of edge protected states reveals resonant tunnelling Breit-Wigner transmission peaks, if the upper edge is uncoupled to the lower edge. Coupling between edges in thin constrictions gives rise to Fano-like and anti-resonances in the transmission spectrum of the system.
We present noise measurements of self-assembled InAs quantum dots at high magnetic fields. In comparison to I-V characteristics at zero magnetic field we notice a strong current overshoot which is due to a Fermi-edge singularity. We observe an enhanced suppression in the shot noise power simultaneous to the current overshoot which is attributed to the electron-electron interaction in the Fermi-edge singularity.
The structure stability and electronic properties of edge carboxylated hexagonal and triangular graphene quantum dots are investigated by using density functional theory. The calculated binding energies show that the hexagonal clusters with armchair edges have the highest stability among all other flakes. The binding energy of carboxylated graphene quantum dots increases by increasing the number of attached carboxyl groups. Our study shows that the total dipole moment significantly increases by adding COOH with the highest values observed in triangular clusters. The edge states in triangular g…
The electronic structure of monolayer MoS$_2$ nanoribbons and quantum dots have been investigated by means of an effective $\mathbf{k}\cdot \mathbf{p}$ two-band model. Both systems with borders exhibit states spatially localized on the edges and with energies lying in the band gap. We show that the conduction and valence band curvatures determine the presence/absence of these states whose origin has been related to the marginal topological properties of the MoS$_2$ single-valley Hamiltonian.
We study electronic and optical properties of single layer phosphorene quantum dots with various shapes, sizes, and edge types (including disordered edges) subjected to an external electric field normal to the structure plane. Compared to graphene quantum dots, in phosphorene clusters of similar shape and size there is a set of edge states with energies dispersed at around the Fermi level. These states make the majority of phosphorene quantum dots metallic and enrich the phosphorene absorption gap with low-energy absorption peaks tunable by the electric field. The presence of the edge states d…
We report on theoretical studies of transport through graphene quantum dots weakly coupled to external ferromagnetic leads. The calculations are performed by exact diagonalization of a tight-binding Hamiltonian with finite Coulomb correlations for graphene sheet and by using the real-time diagrammatic technique in the sequential and cotunneling regimes. The emphasis is put on the role of graphene flake shape and spontaneous edge magnetization in transport characteristics, such as the differential conductance, tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) and the shot noise. It is shown that for certain sh…
Silicene systems, due to the buckled structure of the lattice, manifest remarkable intrinsic spin-orbit interaction triggering a topological phase transition in the low-energy regime. Thus, we found that protected edge states are present in silicene antidots and dots, being polarized in valley-spin pairs. We have also studied the effect of the lattice termination on the properties of the single electron energy levels and electron density distribution of silicene antidots and dots situated in a perpendicular magnetic field. Our calculations confirmed that the topological edge states are propaga…
We study the Fermi-edge singularity appearing in the current-voltage characteristics for resonant tunneling through a localized level at finite temperature. An explicit expression for the current at low temperature and near the threshold for the tunneling process is presented which allows to coalesce data taken at different temperatures to a single curve. Based on this scaling function for the current we analyze experimental data from a GaAs-AlAs-GaAs tunneling device with embedded InAs quantum dots obtained at low temperatures in high magnetic fields.
We study numerically the optical properties of low-buckled silicene and AB-stacked bilayer graphene quantum dots subjected to an external electric field, which is normal to their surface. Within the tight-binding model, the optical absorption is calculated for quantum dots, of triangular and hexagonal shapes, with zigzag and armchair edge terminations. We show that in triangular silicene clusters with zigzag edges a rich and widely tunable infrared absorption peak structure originates from transitions involving zero energy states. The edge of absorption in silicene quantum dots undergoes red s…
The maximum-density-droplet (MDD) state of quantum-dot electrons becomes unstable at strong magnetic fields to the addition of interior holes. Using exact diagonalization, we demonstrate that the first hole is located at the center of the dot when the number of electrons $N$ is smaller than $\sim 14$ and is located away from the center for larger dots. The separation between field strengths at which additional holes are introduced becomes small for large dots, explaining recent observations of a rapid increase in dot area when the magnetic field is increased beyond the MDD stability limit. We …
The dynamics of an exciton-LO-phonon system after an ultrafast optical excitation in an InAs/GaAs quantum dot is studied theoretically. Influence of anharmonic phonon damping and its interplay with the phonon dispersion is analyzed. The signatures of the zone-edge decay process in the absorption spectrum and time evolution are highlighted, providing a possible way of experimental investigation on phonon anharmonicity effects.
We measure tunnelling currents through electrostatically defined quantum dots in a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure connected to two leads. For certain tunnelling barrier configurations and high sample bias we find a pronounced resonance associated with a Fermi edge singularity. This many-body scattering effect appears when the electrochemical potential of the quantum dot is aligned with the Fermi level of the lead less coupled to the dot. By changing the relative tunnelling barrier strength we are able to tune the interaction of the localised electron with the Fermi sea.
We investigate the edge reconstruction phenomenon believed to occur in quantum dots in the quantum Hall regime when the filling fraction is nu < 1. Our approach involves the examination of large dots (< 40 electrons) using a partial diagonalization technique in which the occupancies of the deep interior orbitals are frozen. To interpret the results of this calculation, we evaluate the overlap between the diagonalized ground state and a set of trial wavefunctions which we call projected necklace (PN) states. A PN state is simply the angular momentum projection of a maximum density droplet surro…
Recently, black phosphorus quantum dots were fabricated experimentally. Motivated by these experiments, we theoretically investigate the electronic and optical properties of rectangular phosphorene quantum dots (RPQDs) in the presence of an in-plane electric field and a perpendicular magnetic field. The energy spectra and wave functions of RPQDs are obtained numerically using the tight-binding (TB) approach. We find edge states within the band gap of the RPQD which are well separated from the bulk states. In an undoped RPQD and for in-plane polarized light, due to the presence of well-defined …
We study the electronic structure of monolayer MoS$_2$ quantum dots subject to a perpendicular magnetic field. The coupling between conduction and valence band gives rise to mid-gap topological states which localize near the dot edge. These edge states are analogous to those of 1D quantum rings. We show they present a large, Zeeman-like, linear splitting with the magnetic field, anticross with the delocalized Fock-Darwin-like states of the dot, give rise to Aharonov-Bohm-like oscillations of the conduction (valence) band low-lying states in the K (K') valley, and modify the strong field Landau…
Using the tight-binding approximation we calculated the magnetic susceptibility of graphene quantum dots (GQD) of different geometrical shapes and sizes, smaller than the magnetic length, when the magnetic properties are governed by the electron edge states. Two types of edge states can be discerned: the zero-energy states (ZES) located exactly at the zero-energy Dirac point, and the dispersed edge states (DES) with the energy close, but not exactly equal to zero. DES are responsible for the temperature independent diamagnetic response, while ZES provide the temperature dependent spin Curie pa…
Using the tight-binding approach, we investigate the energy spectrum of square, triangular and hexagonal MoS$_2$ quantum dots (QDs) in the presence of a perpendicular magnetic field. Novel edge states emerge in MoS$_2$ QDs, which are distributed over the whole edge which we call ring states. The ring states are robust in the presence of spin-orbit coupling (SOC). The corresponding energy levels of the ring states oscillate as function of the perpendicular magnetic field which are related to Aharonov-Bohm oscillations. Oscillations in the magnetic field dependence of the energy levels and the p…
Current steps attributed to resonant tunneling through individual InAs quantum dots embedded in a GaAs-AlAs-GaAs tunneling device are investigated experimentally in magnetic fields up to 28 T. The steps evolve into strongly enhanced current peaks in high fields. This can be understood as a field-induced Fermi-edge singularity due to the Coulomb interaction between the tunneling electron on the quantum dot and the partly spin polarized Fermi sea in the Landau quantized three-dimensional emitter.
In this work we present a theoretical description of the transient response of the Fermi Edge Singularity (FES). We study the linear and the nonlinear response of an n-doped QW to laser pulses in the Coherent Control (CC) and Four Wave Mixing (FWM) Configurations. By means of a bosonization formalism we calculate the FWM signal emitted by the sample when it is excited by pulses spectrally peaked around the FES and we show that the long time behavior of the nonlinear signal is very similar to the linear case.
In this work, we investigate the electronic and optical properties of the b-AsP quantum dots(QDs) and quantum rings(QRs) with different edge types in the presence of an in-plane electric field and a perpendicular magnetic field utilizing the tight-binding method. Our calculations show that the electronic and optical properties of edge states largely depend on the edge types. By adjusting the intensity of the electric field or magnetic field, the probability density can be effectively tuned. In particular, under an in-plane electric field, novel edge states emerge in rhombus QDs and QRs with δ …
The electronic energy gap and total dipole moment of chemically functionalized hexagonal and triangular graphene quantum dots are investigated by the density functional theory. It has been found that the energy gap can be efficiently tuned in the selected clusters by edge passivation with different elements or groups. Edge passivation with oxygen provides a considerable decrease of the large energy gap observed in hexagonal nanodots. The edge states and energy gap in triangular graphene quantum dots can also be manipulated by passivation with fluorine. The total dipole moment strongly depends …
We report on the observation of Fermi edge enhanced resonant tunneling transport in a II-VI semiconductor heterostructure. The resonant transport through a self assembled CdSe quantum dot survives up to 45 K and probes a disordered two dimensional (2D) like emitter which dominates the magnetic field dependence of the transport. An enhancement of the tunnel current through many particle effects is clearly observable, even without an applied magnetic field. Additional fine structure in the tunneling current suggests that while conventional Fermi edge singularity theory successfull reproduces the…
We study the addition energy spectra of phosphorene quantum dots focusing on the role of dot size, edges passivation, number of layers and dielectric constant of the substrate where the dots are deposited. We show that for sufficiently low dielectric constants ($\varepsilon_{sub} < 4$), Coulomb blockade can be observed in dot sizes larger than 10 nm, for both passivated and unpassivated edges. For higher dielectric constants (up to $\varepsilon_{sub} = 30$), Coulomb blockade demands smaller dot sizes, but this depends whether the edges are passivated or not. This dramatic role played by the su…
The stability of the magnetization in Lieb graphene quantum dots (GQD) against disorder is studied. Such systems exhibit the degenerate shell of edge states in the middle of the energy gap occupied by spin polarized electrons. Disorder affects the energy spectrum and leads to the removal of the degeneracy, and in a consequence the loss of the magnetization. We find that there is a critical value of disorder strength over which the magnetization starts dropping. We first consider GQDs with different shapes and edge termination and compare the effect of bulk and edge disorder. We find that bulk …
We present a theory of excitonic processes in gate controlled graphene quantum dots. The dependence of the energy gap on shape, size and edge for graphene quantum dots with up to a million atoms is predicted. Using a combination of tight-binding, Hartree-Fock and configuration interaction methods, we show that triangular graphene quantum dots with zigzag edges exhibit optical transitions simultaneously in the THz, visible and UV spectral ranges, determined by strong electron-electron and excitonic interactions. The relationship between optical properties and finite magnetic moment and charge d…
We study the effects of strong coupling of a localized state charge to one-dimensional electronic channels out of equilibrium. While the state of this charge and the coupling strengths determine the scattering phase shifts in the channels, the nonequilibrium partitioning noise induces the tunneling transitions to the localized state. The strong coupling leads to a nonperturbative backaction effect which is manifested in the orthogonality catastrophe and the Fermi-edge singularity in the transition rates. We predict an unusually pronounced manifestation of the non-Gaussian component of noise th…
We suggest a way of confining quasiparticles by an external potential in a small region of a graphene strip. Transversal electron motion plays a crucial role in this confinement. Properties of thus obtained graphene quantum dots are investigated theoretically for different types of the boundary conditions at the edges of the strip. The (quasi)bound states exist in all systems considered. At the same time, the dependence of the conductance on the gate voltage carries an information about the shape of the edges.
We investigated binding of hydrogen atoms to small Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) - i.e. graphene dots with hydrogen-terminated edges - using density functional theory and correlated wavefunction techniques. We considered a number of PAHs with 3 to 7 hexagonal rings and computed binding energies for most of the symmetry unique sites, along with the minimum energy paths for significant cases. The chosen PAHs are small enough to not present radical character at their edges, yet show a clear preference for adsorption at the edge sites which can be attributed to electronic effects. We sho…
The Fermi edge singularity (FES) is a prominent manifestation of the Coulomb interaction. It can be observed in a controllable way by studying the transport through a quantum dot (QD), which is electrostatically coupled to the leads. In this paper we study how FES affects higher order tunneling processes (cotunneling). To address this problem we use the bosonic description of the electrons in the leads, which naturally accounts for the Coulomb interaction. We report the multiscale dependence of the current through the QD on the energy of the QD level and on the bias between the leads obtained …
We theoretically investigate the electronic and magneto-optical properties of rectangular, hexangular, and triangular monolayer phosphorene quantum dots (MPQDs) utilizing the tight-binding method. The electronic states, density of states, electronic density distribution, and Laudau levels as well as the optical absorption spectrum are calculated numerically. Our calculations show that: (1) edge states appear in the band gap in all kinds of MPQDs regardless of their shapes and edge configurations due to the anisotropic electron hopping in monolayer phosphorene (MLP). Electrons in any edge state…
Engineering chiral $p$-wave superconductivity in semiconductor structures offers fascinating ways to obtain and study Majorana modes in a condensed matter context. Here, we theoretically investigate chiral $p$-wave superconductivity in quantum dots and quantum rings. Using both analytical as well as numerical methods, we calculate the quasiparticle excitation spectra in these structures and the corresponding excitation amplitudes and charge densities. In the topological regime, we can observe the chiral edge modes localized at the boundaries and possessing finite energy in quantum dots and qua…
Scattering of carriers between spatially separated zero dimensional states has been observed in a system of self-assembled In_{0.55}Al_{0.45}As quantum dots. We believe the interdot tunneling is mediated by localized states below the barrier band edge. The experiment was performed by taking photoluminescence excitation spectra at 4.2K using a near-field scanning optical microscope. Surprisingly, the excitation spectrum from individual dots does not quench to zero at any energy, even when the energy of the exciting light is tuned below the barrier band edge. On top of this continuum, narrow res…
We study quantum dots defined by external potentials within finite flakes of bilayer graphene using the tight-binding approach. We find that in the limit of large flakes containing zigzag edges the dot-localized energy levels appear within the energy continuum formed by extended states. As a consequence no ionization threshold for the carriers contained within the dot exists. For smaller flakes with zigzag boundaries the dot-localized energy levels appear interlaced with the energy levels outside the flake, so in a charging experiment the electrons will be added alternately to the dot area and…
We study the electronic and magnetic properties of multilayer quantum dots (MQDs) of graphite in the nearest-neighbor approximation of tight-binding model. We calculate the electronic density of states and orbital susceptibility of the system as function of the Fermi level location. We demonstrate that properties of MQD depend strongly on the shape of the system, on the parity of the layer number and on the form of the cluster edge. The special emphasis is given to reveal the new properties with respect to the monolayer quantum dots of graphene. The most interesting results are obtained for th…
We present realistic simulations of quantum confinement effects in ballistic graphene quantum dots with linear dimensions of 10 to 40 nm. We determine wavefunctions and energy level statistics in the presence of disorder resulting from edge roughness, charge impurities, or short-ranged scatterers. Marked deviations from a simple Dirac billiard for massless fermions are found. We find a remarkably stable dependence of the nearest-neighbor level spacing on edge roughness suggesting that the roughness of fabricated devices can be potentially characterized by the distribution of measured Coulomb b…
Quantum dots in magnetic fields are studied within the current spin density functional formalism avoiding any spatial symmetry restrictions of the solutions. We find that the maximum density droplet reconstructs into states with broken internal symmetry: The Chamon-Wen edge co-exists with a modulation of the charge density along the edge. The phase boundaries between the polarization transition, the maximum density droplet and its reconstruction are in agreement with recent experimental results.
We investigate the in-plane oscillations of the relaxed shape graphene due to externally applied tensile edge stress along both the armchair and zigzag directions. We show that the total elastic energy density is enhanced with temperature for the case of applied tensile edge stress along the zigzag direction. Thermo-electromechanical effects are treated via pseudomorphic vector potentials to analyze the influence of these coupled effects on the bandstructures of bilayer graphene quantum dots (QDs). We report that the level crossing between ground and first excited states in the localized edge …
We present the results of ab-initio density functional theory based calculations of the stability and reconstruction of zigzag edges in triangular graphene quantum dots. We show that, while the reconstructed pentagon-heptagon zigzag edge structure is more stable in the absence of hydrogen, ideal zigzag edges are energetically favored by hydrogen passivation. Zero-energy band exists in both structures when passivated by hydrogen, however in case of pentagon-heptagon zigzag, this band is found to have stronger dispersion, leading to the loss of net magnetization.
We present a theory of electronic properties of gated triangular graphene quantum dots with zigzag edges as a function of size and carrier density. We focus on electronic correlations, spin and geometrical effects using a combination of atomistic tight-binding, Hartree-Fock and configuration interaction methods (TB+HF+CI) including long range Coulomb interactions. The single particle energy spectrum of triangular dots with zigzag edges exhibits a degenerate shell at the Fermi level with a degeneracy N_{edge} proportional to the edge size. We determine the effect of the electron-electron intera…
Spin waves have been studied experimentally and by simulations in 1000 nm side equilateral triangular Permalloy dots in the Buckle state (B, with in-plane field along the triangle base) and the Y state (Y, with in-plane field perpendicular to the base). The excess of exchange energy at the triangles edges creates channels that allow effective spin wave propagation along the edges inthe B state. These quasi one-dimensional spin waves emitted by the vertex magnetic charges gradually transform from propagating to standing due to interference and(as pointed out by simulations) areweakly affected b…
Fermi-edge absorption theory predicting the spectrum, A(ω)\propto ω^{-2δ_0/π+δ^2_0/π^2}, relies on the assumption that scattering phase, δ_0, is frequency-independent. Dependence of δ_0 on ωbecomes crucial near the resonant condition, where the phase changes abruptly by π. In this limit, due to finite time spent by electron on a resonant level, the scattering is dynamic. We incorporate this time delay into the theory, solve the Dyson equation with a modified kernel and find that, near the resonance, A(ω) behaves as ω^{-3/4} |\ln ω|. Resonant scattering off the core hole takes place in 1D and 2…
We investigate the electronic and transport properties of topological and trivial InAs$_{1-x}$Bi$_x$ quantum dots (QDs). By considering the rapid band gap change within valence band anticrossing theory for InAs$_{1-x}$Bi$_x$, we predicted that Bi-alloyed quantum wells become $\sim 30$meV gapped 2D topological insulators for well widths $d>6.9$nm $(x = 0.15)$ and obtain the $\boldsymbol{k.p}$ parameters of the corresponding Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang (BHZ) model. We analytically solve this model for cylindrical confinement via modified Bessel functions. For non-topological dots we find "geometricall…
We have fabricated and studied the photoluminescence from microdisks containing single, selected self-assembled quantum dots. Using two electron beam lithography exposures and a two-step selective wet etching process, the dots were positioned at the microdisks edges with sub-micron precision. The selection and positioning of quantum dots enables an optimum coupling of the dot emission to the microdisks whispering modes.
A Kramers pair of helical edge states in quantum spin Hall effect (QSHE) is robust against normal dephasing but not robust to spin dephasing. In our work, we provide an effective spin dephasing mechanism in the puddles of two-dimensional (2D) QSHE, which is simulated as quantum dots modeled by 2D massive Dirac Hamiltonian. We demonstrate that the spin dephasing effect can originate from the combination of the Rashba spin-orbit coupling and electron-phonon interaction, which gives rise to inelastic backscattering in edge states within the topological insulator quantum dots, although the time-re…
We investigate the magnetic interface states of graphene quantum dots that contain p-n junctions. Within a tight-binding approach, we consider rectangular quantum dots in the presence of a perpendicular magnetic field containing p-n, as well as p-n-p and n-p-n junctions. The results show the interplay between the edge states associated with the zigzag terminations of the sample and the snake states that arise at the p-n junction, due to the overlap between electron and hole states at the potential interface. Remarkable localized states are found at the crossing of the p-n junction with the zig…
We have performed time-resolved spectroscopy on InAs quantum dot ensembles in photonic crystal membranes. The influence of the photonic crystal is investigated by varying the lattice constant systematically. We observe a strong slow down of the quantum dots' spontaneous emission rates as the two-dimensional bandgap is tuned through their emission frequencies. The measured band edges are in full agreement with theoretical predictions. We characterize the multi-exponential decay curves by their mean decay time and find enhancement of the spontaneous emission at the bandgap edges and strong inhib…
We present a direct experimental evidence of photo-ionized CdTe quantum dot core having luminescence "off" state at band-edge photo-excitation. We use the autocorrelation of fluorescence fluctuations from dilute colloidal solution of CdTe quantum dots in a diffraction limited detection volume to determine their photo-ionization probability. The ionization probability is in the same order of magnitude (\approx10-6) as the CdSe and CdSe/ZnS core/shell quantum dots. Further, we measured the ionization/ neutralization rates (\approx104 s-1) after addition of β-mercaptanol and found that ionization…
Micromagnetic simulations studies on Permalloy (Ni80Fe20) nanodot with different shape and edge-to-edge separation (s) down to 25nm arranged in square lattice are reported. We observe the significant variation of spin-wave (SW) dynamics of nanodots of different shapes (triangular, diamond and hexagon) and of fixed dot diameter 100nm with varying s. Modes for single dot are transformed in an array into multiple quantized, edge and centre modes for different shapes and edge-to-edge separations, with different spin wave frequencies and peak intensities. Specifically, in the triangular dot sample,…
We study the photoabsorption cross section and Fermi-edge singularities (FES) in graphene. For fillings below one half, we find, besides the expected FES in form of a peaked edge at the threshold (Fermi) energy, a second singularity to arise at excitation energies that correspond to the Dirac point in the density of states. We can explain this behaviour by comparing our results with the photoabsorption cross section of a metal with a small central band gap where we find a very similar signature. The existence of the second singularity might prove useful for an experimental determination of the…
We study the transport through evanescent waves in graphene quantum dots of different geometries. The transmission is suppressed when the leads are attached to edges of the same majority sublattice. Otherwise, the transmission depends exponentially on the distance between leads in rectangular dots, and as a power law in circular dots. The transmission through junctions where the transmitted and reflected currents belong to the opposite valley as the incoming one depends on details of the lattice structure at distances comparable to the atomic spacing.
We report on a new approach for positioning of self-assembled InAs quantum dots on (110) GaAs with nanometer precision. By combining self-assembly of quantum dots with molecular beam epitaxy on in-situ cleaved surfaces (cleaved-edge overgrowth) we have successfully fabricated arrays of long-range ordered InAs quantum dots. Both atomic force microscopy and micro-photoluminescence measurements demonstrate the ability to control size, position, and ordering of the quantum dots. Furthermore, single dot photoluminescence investigations confirm the high optical quality of the quantum dots fabricated…
Coherent manipulation of binary degrees of freedom is at the heart of modern quantum technologies. Graphene offers two binary degrees: the electron spin and the valley. Efficient spin control has been demonstrated in many solid state systems, while exploitation of the valley has only recently been started, yet without control on the single electron level. Here, we show that van-der Waals stacking of graphene onto hexagonal boron nitride offers a natural platform for valley control. We use a graphene quantum dot induced by the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope and demonstrate valley splitt…
Graphene is a nonmagnetic semimetal and cannot be directly used as electronic or spintronic devices. We demonstrate that graphene quantum dots (GQDs) can exhibit strong edge magnetism and tunable energy gaps due to the presence of localized edge states. By using large-scale first principle density functional theory (DFT) calculations and detailed analysis based on model Hamiltonians, we can show that the zigzag edge states in GQDs become much stronger and more localized as the system size increases. The enhanced edge states induce strong electron-electron interactions along the edges of GQDs, …