Pseudo-ballistic transport in 3D topological insulator quantum wires
Joseph Dufouleur, Louis Veyrat, Emmanouil Xypakis, Jens H. Bardarson, Christian Nowka, Silke Hampel, Barbara Eichler, Oliver G. Schmidt, Bernd Büchner, Romain Giraud
备注：
Main text,4 figures; Supplementary Information, 3 figures
Quantum conductance fluctuations are investigated in disordered 3D topological insulator quantum wires. Both experiments and theory reveal a new transport regime in a mesoscopic conductor, pseudo-ballistic transport, for which ballistic properties persist beyond the transport mean free path, characteristic of diffusive transport. It results in non-universal conductance fluctuations due to quasi-1D surface modes, as observed in long and narrow Bi$_2$Se$_3$ nanoribbons. Spin helical Dirac fermions in quantum wires retain pseudo-ballistic properties over an unusually broad energy range, due to strong quantum confinement and weak momentum scattering.
We study the Zeeman splitting in induced ballistic 1D quantum wires aligned along the [233] and [011] axes of a high mobility (311)A undoped heterostructure. Our data shows that the g-factor anisotropy for magnetic fields applied along the high symmetry [011] direction can be explained by the 1D confinement only. However when the magnetic field is along [233] there is an interplay between the 1D confinement and 2D crystal anisotropy. This is highlighted for the [233] wire by an unusual non-monotonic behavior of the g-factor as the wire is made narrower.
We have measured the non-equilibrium current noise in a ballisticone-dimensional wire which exhibits an additional conductanceplateau at $0.7\times2e^2/h$. The Fano factor shows a clearreduction on the 0.7 structure, and eventually vanishes uponapplying a strong parallel magnetic field. These results provideexperimental evidence that the 0.7 structure is associated withtwo conduction channels which have different transmissionprobabilities.
We have studied the Zeeman splitting in ballistic hole quantum wires formed in a (311)A quantum well by surface gate confinement. Transport measurements clearly show lifting of the spin degeneracy and crossings of the subbands when an in-plane magnetic field B is applied parallel to the wire. When B is oriented perpendicular to the wire, no spin-splitting is discernible up to B = 8.8 T. The observed large Zeeman splitting anisotropy in our hole quantum wires demonstrates the importance of quantum-confinement for spin-splitting in nanostructures with strong spin-orbit coupling.
The ballistic conductance of a coupled $T$-shaped semiconductor quantum wire (CTQW) are studied. Two types of CTQW are considered, one of which is a $Π$-shaped quantum wire ($Π$QW) which consists of two transverse wires on the same side of the main wire and the other a $Π$-clone quantum wire ($Π$CQW) which consists of two transverse wires on the opposite sides of the main wire. The mode matching method and Landauer-Buttiker theory are employed to study the energy dependence of the ballistic conductance. Most of transmission profiles of $Π$QW and $Π$CQW are found to be distinguishable for large…
A self-consistent theory of the admittance of a perfect ballistic, locally charge neutral wire is proposed. Compared to a non-interacting theory, screening effects drastically change the frequency behavior of the conductance. In the single-channel case the frequency dependence of the admittance is monotonic, while for two or more channels collective interchannel excitations lead to resonant structures in the admittance. The imaginary part of the admittance is typically positive, but can become negative near resonances.
We study the anomalous conductance plateau around $G = 0.7(2e^{2}/h)$ and the zero-bias anomaly in ballistic hole quantum wires with respect to in-plane magnetic fields applied parallel $B_{\parallel}$ and perpendicular $B_{\perp}$ to the quantum wire. As seen in electron quantum wires, the magnetic fields shift the 0.7 structure down to $G = 0.5(2e^{2}/h)$ and simultaneously quench the zero bias anomaly. However, these effects are strongly dependent on the orientation of the magnetic field, owing to the highly anisotropic effective Landé \emph{g}-factor $g^{*}$ in hole quantum wires. Our resu…
We investigate the ballistic electron transport in a two dimensional Quantum Wire under the action of an electric field ($E_y$). We demonstrate how the presence of a Spin Orbit coupling, due to the uniform electric confinement field gives a non-commutative effect as in the presence of a transverse magnetic field. We discuss how the non commutation implies an edge localization of the currents depending on the electron spins also giving a semi-classical spin dependent Hall current. We also discuss how it is possible obtain a quantized Spin Hall conductance in the ballistic transport regime by de…
The Coulomb drag between parallel, {\it ballistic} quantum wires is studied theoretically in the presence of a perpendicular magnetic field B. The transresistance R_D shows peaks as a function of the Fermi level and splitting energy between the 1D subbands of the wires. The sharpest peaks appear when the Fermi level crosses the subband extrema so that the Fermi momenta are small. Two other kinds of peaks appear when either {\it intra}- or {\it inter}-subband transitions of electrons have maximum probability; the {\it intra}-subband transitions correspond to a small splitting energy. R_D depend…
We study the spin-dependent electronic transport through a one-dimensional ballistic quantum wire in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit interaction. In particular, we consider the effect of the spin-orbit interaction resulting from the lateral confinement of the two-dimensional electron gas to the one-dimensional wire geometry. We generalize a situation suggested earlier [P. Streda and P. Seba, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 256601 (2003)] which allows for spin-polarized electron transport. As a result of the lateral confinement, the spin is rotated out of the plane of the two-dimensional system. We furt…
The acoustic phonon-mediated drag-contribution to the drag current created in the ballistic transport regime in a one-dimensional nanowire by phonons generated by a current-carrying ballistic channel in a nearby nanowire is calculated. The threshold of the phonon-mediated drag current with respect to bias or gate voltage is predicted.
We report magnetotransport measurements in ballistic graphene/hexagonal boron nitride mesoscopic wires where the charge carrier mean free path is comparable to wire width $W$. Magnetoresistance curves show characteristic peak structures where the peak field scales with the ratio of cyclotron radius $R_\textrm{c}$ and wire width $W$ as $W/R_\textrm{c} = 0.9 \pm 0.1$, due to diffusive boundary scattering. The obtained proportionality constant between $R_\textrm{c}$ and $W$ differs from that of a classical semiconductor 2D electron system where $W/R_\textrm{c} = 0.55$.
We have measured the collective excitation spectrum of interacting electrons in one-dimension. The experiment consists of controlling the energy and momentum of electrons tunneling between two clean and closely situated, parallel quantum wires in a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure while measuring the resulting conductance. We measure excitation spectra that clearly deviate from the non-interacting spectrum, attesting to the importance of Coulomb interactions. Notable is an observed 30% enhancement of the velocity of the main excitation branch relative to non-interacting electrons with the same dens…
Conductance fluctuations, localization and statistics of Lyapunov exponents are studied numerically in pure metallic wires with rough boundaries (quasi-ballistic wires). We find that the correlation energy of conductance fluctuations scales anomalously with the sample dimensions, indicating the role of Lévy flights. Application of a magnetic field deflects the Lévy flights which reduces the localization length. This deflection also breaks the geometrical flux cancellation and restores the usual Aharonov-Bohm type magneto-conductance fluctuations.
Ballistic spin resonance was experimentally observed in a quasi-one-dimensional wire by Frolov et al. [Nature (London) 458, 868 (2009)]. The spin resonance was generated by a combination of an external static magnetic field and the oscillating effective spin-orbit magnetic field due to periodic bouncings of the electrons off the boundaries of a narrow channel. An increase of the D'yakonov-Perel spin relaxation rate was observed when the frequency of the spin-orbit field matched that of the Larmor precession frequency around the external magnetic field. Here we develop a model to account for th…
We introduce the spin and momentum dependent {\em force operator} which is defined by the Hamiltonian of a {\em clean} semiconductor quantum wire with homogeneous Rashba spin-orbit (SO) coupling attached to two ideal (i.e., free of spin and charge interactions) leads. Its expectation value in the spin-polarized electronic wave packet injected through the leads explains why the center of the packet gets deflected in the transverse direction. Moreover, the corresponding {\em spin density} will be dragged along the transverse direction to generate an out-of-plane spin accumulation of opposite sig…
The effect of exchange interaction on the two-terminal conductance of fully ballistic samples is studied using a many-particle wave packet formalism. The approach shows that the puzzling nonuniversal conductance quantization can be explained as a fermion exchange interaction effect. The Landauer conductance step Go is obtained when two-fermion interaction is considered. Reductions of Go are due to a many-particle exchange interaction effect. For ballistic GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wires longer than 1 um, a conductance step reduction is obtained in agreement with experimental results.
Microscopic current fluctuations are inseparable from conductance. We give an integral account of both quantized conductance and nonequilibrium thermal noise in one-dimensional ballistic wires. Our high-current noise theory opens a very different window on such systems. Central to the role of nonequilibrium ballistic noise is its direct and robust dependence on the statistics of carriers. For, with increasing density, they undergo a marked crossover from classical to strongly degenerate behavior. This is singularly evident where the two-probe conductance shows quantized steps: namely, at the d…
We model one-dimensional transport through each open channel of a quantum wire by a Luttinger liquid with three different interaction parameters for the leads, the contact regions and the wire, and with two barriers at the contacts. We show that this model explains several features of recent experiments, such as the flat conductance plateaux observed even at finite temperatures and for different lengths, and universal conductance corrections in different channels. We discuss the possibility of seeing resonance-like structures of a fully open channel at very low temperatures.
We have investigated within the theory of Fermi liquid dependence of Coulomb drag current in a passive quantum wire on the applied voltage $V$ across an active wire and on the temperature $T$ for any values of $eV/k_BT$. We assume that the bottoms of the 1D minibands in both wires almost coincide with the Fermi level. We come to conclusions that 1) within a certain temperature interval the drag current can be a descending function of the temperature $T$; 2) the experimentally observed temperature dependence $T^{-0.77}$ of the drag current can be interpreted within the framework of Fermi liquid…
The many-body wave-function of an interacting one-dimensional electron system is probed, focusing on the low-density, strong interaction regime. The properties of the wave-function are determined using tunneling between two long, clean, parallel quantum wires in a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure, allowing for gate-controlled electron density. As electron density is lowered to a critical value the many-body state abruptly changes from an extended state with a well-defined momentum to a localized state with a wide range of momentum components. The signature of the localized states appears as discret…
The unexpected "0.7" plateau of conductance quantisation is usually observed for ballistic one-dimensional devices. In this work we study a quasi-ballistic quantum wire, for which the disorder induced backscattering reduces the conductance quantisation steps. We find that the transmission probability resonances coexist with the anomalous plateau. The studies of these resonances as a function of the in-plane magnetic field and electron density point to the presence of spin polarisation at low carrier concentrations and constitute a method for the determination of the effective g-factor suitable…
Quasiballistic 1D quantum wires are known to have a conductance of the order of 2e^2/h, with small sample-to-sample fluctuations. We present a study of the transconductance G_12 of two Coulomb-coupled quasiballistic wires, i.e., we consider the Coulomb drag geometry. We show that the fluctuations in G_12 differ dramatically from those of the diagonal conductance G_ii: the fluctuations are large, and can even exceed the mean value, thus implying a possible reversal of the induced drag current. We report extensive numerical simulations elucidating the fluctuations, both for correlated and uncorr…
We present numerical calculations of the ballistic spin-transport properties of quasi-one-dimensional wires in the presence of the spin-orbit (Rashba) interaction. A tight-binding analog of the Rashba Hamiltonian which models the Rashba effect is used. By varying the robustness of the Rashba coupling and the width of the wire, weak and strong coupling regimes are identified. Perfect electron spin-modulation is found for the former regime, regardless of the incident Fermi energy and mode number. In the latter however, the spin-conductance has a strong energy dependence due to a nontrivial subba…
We study a suspended graphene sheet subject to the electric field of a gate underneath. We compute the elastic deformation of the sheet and the corresponding effective gauge field, which modifies the electronic transport. In a clean system the two-terminal conductance of the sample is reduced below the ballistic limit and is almost totally suppressed at low carrier concentrations in samples under tension. Residual disorder restores a small finite conductivity.
The conductance of a ballistic elliptically shaped quantum wire is investigated theoretically. It is shown that the effect of the curvature results in strong oscillating dependence of the conductance on the applied bias.
In the ballistic limit, the Landauer conductance steps of a mesoscopic quantum wire have been explained by coherent and dissipationless transmission of individual electrons across a one-dimensional barrier. This leaves untouched the central issue of conduction: a quantum wire, albeit ballistic, has finite resistance and so must dissipate energy. Exactly HOW does the quantum wire shed its excess electrical energy? We show that the answer is provided, uniquely, by many-body quantum kinetics. Not only does this inevitably lead to universal quantization of the conductance, in spite of dissipation;…
The effect of geometrical confinement, atomic position and orientation of Silicon nanowires (SiNWs) on their thermal properties are investigated using the phonon dispersion obtained using a Modified Valence Force Field (MVFF) model. The specific heat ($C_{v}$) and the ballistic thermal conductance ($κ^{bal}_{l}$) shows anisotropic variation with changing cross-section shape and size of the SiNWs. The $C_{v}$ increases with decreasing cross-section size for all the wires. The triangular wires show the largest $C_{v}$ due to their highest surface-to-volume ratio. The square wires with [110] orie…
Electronic transport in ferromagnetic ballistic conductors is predicted to exhibit ballistic anisotropic magnetoresistance (BAMR) - a change in the ballistic conductance with the direction of magnetization. This phenomenon originates from the effect of the spin-orbit interaction on the electronic band structure which leads to a change in the number of bands crossing the Fermi energy when the magnetization direction changes. We illustrate the significance of this phenomenon by performing ab-initio calculations of the ballistic conductance in ferromagnetic Ni and Fe nanowires which display a siz…
The effect of Rashba spin-orbit interaction in quantum wires with hard-wall boundaries is discussed. The exact wave function and eigenvalue equation are worked out pointing out the mixing between the spin and spatial parts. The spectral properties are also studied within the perturbation theory with respect to the strength of the spin-orbit interaction and diagonalization procedure. A comparison is done with the results of a simple model, the two-band model, that takes account only of the first two sub-bands of the wire. Finally, the transport properties within the ballistic regime are analyti…
We carry out a first-principles density functional study of the interaction between a monatomic Pt wire and a CO molecule, comparing the energy of different adsorption configurations (bridge, on top, substitutional, and tilted bridge) and discussing the effects of spin-orbit (SO) coupling on the electronic structure and on the ballistic conductance of two of these systems (bridge and substitutional). We find that, when the wire is unstrained, the bridge configuration is energetically favored, while the substitutional geometry becomes possible only after the breaking of the Pt-Pt bond next to C…
We work out a theory of the Coulomb drag current created under the ballistic transport regime in a one-dimensional nanowire by a ballistic non-Ohmic current in a nearby parallel nanowire. As in the Ohmic case, we predict sharp oscillation of the drag current as a function of gate voltage or the chemical potential of electrons. We study also dependence of the drag current on the voltage V across the driving wire. For relatively large values of V the drag current is proportional to V^2.
We study ballistic hole transport through Ge/Si core/shell nanowires at low temperatures. We observe Fabry-P$\acute{e}$rot interference patterns as well as conductance plateaus at integer multiples of 2e$^2$/h at zero magnetic field. Magnetic field evolution of these plateaus reveals large effective Land$\acute{e}$ g-factors. Ballistic effects are observed in nanowires with silicon shell thicknesses of 1 - 3 nm, but not in bare germanium wires. These findings inform the future development of spin and topological quantum devices which rely on ballistic subband-resolved transport.
We study the magnetoconductance of topological insulator nanowires in a longitudinal magnetic field, including Aharonov-Bohm, Altshuler-Aronov-Spivak, perfectly conducting channel, and universal conductance fluctuation effects. Our focus is on predicting experimental behavior in single wires in the quantum limit where temperature is reduced to zero. We show that changing the Fermi energy $E_F$ can tune a wire from from ballistic to diffusive conduction and to localization. In both ballistic and diffusive single wires we find both Aharonov-Bohm and Altshuler-Aronov-Spivak oscillations with simi…
We calculated the effects of spin-orbit interaction (SOI) on the energy bands, ballistic conductance and the electron-diffusion thermoelectric power of a nanowire by varying the temperature, electron density and width of the wire. The potential barriers at the edges of the wire are assumed to be very high. A consequence of the boundary conditions used in this model is determined by the energy band structure, resulting in wider plateaus when the electron density is increased due to larger energy-level separation as the higher subbands are occupied by electrons. The nonlinear dependence of the t…
We develop a kinetic equation description of Coulomb drag between ballistic one-dimensional electron systems, which enables us to demonstrate that equilibration processes between right- and left-moving electrons are crucially important for establishing dc drag. In one-dimensional geometry, this type of equilibration requires either backscattering near the Fermi level or scattering with small momentum transfer near the bottom of the electron spectrum. Importantly, pairwise forward scattering in the vicinity of the Fermi surface alone is not sufficient to produce a nonzero dc drag resistivity $ρ…
A linear theory of electron transport is developed for a system of two ideal quantum wires, of length L, coupled by tunneling and Coulomb interaction. The interaction of electrons with acoustical phonons is included and the results are valid in both the ballistic and diffusive regime. In the {\it ballistic} regime, both tunneling and Coulomb drag lead to a {\it negative} transresistance R_{TR}, while in the {\it diffusive} regime the tunneling opposes the drag and leads to a {\it positive} R_{TR}. If L is smaller than the phase-breaking length, the tunneling leads to interference oscillations …
Transport properties through wide and short ballistic graphene junctions are studied in the presence of arbitrary dopings and magnetic fields. No dependence on the magnetic field is observed at the Dirac point for any current cumulant, just as in a classical diffusive system, both in normal-graphene-normal and normal-graphene-superconductor junctions. This pseudo-diffusive regime is however extremely fragile respect to doping at finite fields. We identify the crossovers to a field-suppressed and a normal ballistic transport regime in the magnetic field - doping parameter space, and provide a p…
We have fabricated and studied a ballistic one-dimensional p-type quantum wire using an undoped AlGaAs/GaAs heterostructure. The absence of modulation doping eliminates remote ionized impurity scattering and allows high mobilities to be achieved over a wide range of hole densities, and in particular, at very low densities where carrier-carrier interactions are strongest. The device exhibits clear quantized conductance plateaus with highly stable gate characteristics. These devices provide opportunities for studying spin-orbit coupling and interaction effects in mesoscopic hole systems in the s…
We discuss the combined effect of Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interactions in polygonal loops formed by quantum wires, when the electron are injected in a node and collected at the opposite one. The conditions that allow perfect localization are found. Furthermore, we investigate the suppression of the Al'tshuler--Aronov--Spivak oscillations that appear, in presence of a magnetic flux, when the electrons are injected and collected at the same node. Finally, we point out that a recent realization of a ballistic spin interferometer can be used to obtain a reliable estimate of the magnitude…
We propose a spin field-effect transistor based on spin-orbit (s-o) coupling of both the Rashba and the Dresselhaus types. Differently from earlier proposals, spin transport through our device is tolerant against spin-independent scattering processes. Hence the requirement of strictly ballistic transport can be relaxed. This follows from a unique interplay between the Dresselhaus and the (gate-controlled) Rashba interactions; these can be tuned to have equal strengths thus yielding k-independent eigenspinors even in two dimensions. We discuss implementations with two-dimensional devices and qu…
We investigate ballistic transport and quantum interference in a nanoscale quantum wire loop fab-ricated as a GaAs/AlGaAs field-effect heterostructure. Four-terminal measurements of current and voltage characteristics as a function of top gate voltages show negative bend resistance as a clear signature of ballistic transport. In perpendicular magnetic fields phase-coherent transport leads to Aharonov-Bohm (AB) conductance oscillations which show equal amplitudes in the local and the non-local measurement at a temperature of 1.5 K and above. We attribute this novel observation to the symmetry o…
We report experimental evidence of ballistic hole transport in one-dimensional quantum wires gate-defined in a strained SiGe/Ge/SiGe quantum well. At zero magnetic field, we observe conductance plateaus at integer multiples of 2e^2/h. At finite magnetic field, the splitting of these plateaus by Zeeman effect reveals largely anisotropic g-factors, with absolute values below 1 in the quantum-well plane, and exceeding 10 out of plane. This g-factor anisotropy is consistent with a heavy-hole character of the propagating valence-band states, in line with a predominant confinement in the growth dire…
We studied theoretically ballistic electronic transport in a proposed mesoscopic structure - Quantum Cable. Our results demonstrated that Qauntum Cable is a unique structure for the study of mesoscopic transport. As a function of Fermi energy, Ballistic conductance exhibits interesting stepwise features. Besides the steps of one or two quantum conductance units ($2e^2/h$), conductance plateaus of more than two quantum conductance units can also be expected due to the accidental degeneracies (crossings) of subbands. As structure parameters is varied, conductance width displays oscillatory prope…
A quantum phase transition is an unequivocal signature of strongly correlated many-body physics. Signatures of such phenomena are yet to be observed in ballistic transport through quantum wires. Recent developments in quantum wires have made it possible to enhance the interaction between the electrons. Here we show that hitherto unexplained anticrossing between conduction energy sub-bands, observed in such experiments, can be explained through a simple yet effective discretised model which undergoes a second order quantum phase transition within the Ising universality class. Accordingly, we ob…
We calculate the current and electrostatic potential drop in metallic carbon nanotube wires self-consistently, by solving the Green's function and electrostatics equations in the ballistic case. About one tenth of the applied voltage drops across the bulk of a nanowire, independent of the lengths considered here. The remaining nine tenths of the bias drops near the contacts, thereby creating a non linear potential drop. The scaling of the electric field at the center of the nanotube with length (L) is faster than 1/L (roughly $1/L^{1.25-1.75}$). At room temperature, the low bias conductance of…
We have theoretically investigated the influence of interface roughness scattering on the low temperature mobility of electrons in quantum wires when electrons fill one or many subbands. We find the Drude conductance of the wire with length $\mathcal{L}$ first increases with increasing linear concentration of electrons $η$ and then decreases at larger concentrations. For small radius $R$ of the wire with length $\mathcal{L}$ the peak of the conductance $G_{max}$ is below $e^2/h$ so that electrons are localized. The height of this peak grows as a large power of $R$, so that at large $R$ the con…
The combined presence of a Rashba and a Zeeman effect in a ballistic one-dimensional conductor generates a spin pseudogap and the possibility to propagate a beam with well defined spin orientation. Without interactions transmission through a barrier gives a relatively well polarized beam. Using renormalization group arguments, we examine how electron-electron interactions may affect the transmission coefficient and the polarization of the outgoing beam.
We study spin effects in the magneto-conductance of ballistic mesoscopic systems subject to inhomogeneous magnetic fields. We present a numerical approach to the spin-dependent Landauer conductance which generalizes recursive Green function techniques to the case with spin. Based on this method we address spin-flip effects in quantum transport of spin-polarized and -unpolarized electrons through quantum wires and various two-dimensional Aharonov-Bohm geometries. In particular, we investigate the range of validity of a spin switch mechanism recently found which allows for controlling spins indi…
We investigate the transport properties of two strongly coupled ballistic one-dimensional (1D) wires, defined by a split-gate structure deposited on a GaAs/AlGaAs double quantum well. Matching the widths and electron densities of the two wires brings them into resonance, forming symmetric and antisymmetric 1D subbands separated by energy gaps that are measured to be larger than their two-dimensional counterpart. Applying a magnetic field parallel to the wire axes enhances wavefunction mixing at low fields, whereas at high fields the wires become completely decoupled.
We consider single-channel transmission through a double quantum dot system that consists of two single dots coupled by a wire of finite length L. In order to explain the numerically obtained results for a realistic double dot system we explore a simple model. It consists, as the realistic system, of two dots connected by a wire of length L. However, each of the two single dots is characterized by a few energy levels only, and the wire is assumed to have only one level whose energy depends on L. The transmission is described by using S-matrix theory. The model explains in particular the splitt…
We investigate the influence of a perpendicular magnetic field on the spectral and spin properties of a ballistic quasi-one-dimensional electron system with Rashba effect. The magnetic field strongly alters the spin-orbit induced modification to the subband structure when the magnetic length becomes comparable to the lateral confinement. A new subband-dependent energy splitting at k=0 is found which can be much larger than the Zeeman splitting. This is due to the breaking of a combined spin orbital-parity symmetry.
We propose an electronic double quantum wire system that contains a pair of edge blocking potential and a coupling element in the middle barrier between two ballistic quantum wires. A window and a resonator coupling control between the parallel wires are discussed and compared for the enhancement of the interwire transfer processes in an appropriate magnetic field. We illustrate the results of the analysis by performing computational simulations on the conductance and probability density of electron waves in the window and resonator coupled double wire system.
The influence of local oxidation in silicon nanowires on hole transport, and hence the effect of varying the oxidation state of silicon atoms at the wire surface, is studied using density functional theory in conjunction with a Green's function scattering method. For silicon nanowires with growth direction along [110] and diameters of a few nanometers, it is found that the introduction of oxygen bridging and back bonds does not significantly degrade hole transport for voltages up to several hundred millivolts relative to the valence band edge. As a result, the mean free paths are comparable to…
A ballistic strip of graphene (width W>> length L) connecting two normal metal contacts is known to have a minimum conductivity of 4e^{2}/pi h at the Dirac point of charge neutrality. We calculate what happens if one of the two contacts becomes superconducting. While the ballistic conductance away from the Dirac point is increased by Andreev reflection at the normal-superconductor (NS) interface, we find that the minimum conductivity stays the same. This is explained as a manifestation of pseudo-diffusive conduction at the Dirac point. As a generalization of our results for a ballistic system,…
We investigate a possibility of pair electron-electron e-e collisions in a ballistic wire with spin-orbit coupling and only one populated mode. Unlike in a spin-degenerate system, a combination of spin-splitting in momentum space with a momentum-dependent spin-precession opens up a finite phase space for pair e-e collisions around three distinct positions of the wire's chemical potential. For a short wire, we calculate corresponding resonant contributions to the conductance, which have different power-law temperature dependencies, and, in some cases, vanish if the wire's transverse confinement…
Monoatomic chains of molybdenum encapsulated in single walled carbon nanotubes of different chiralities are investigated using density functional theory. We determine the optimal size of the carbon nanotube for encapsulating a single atomic wire, as well as the most stable atomic arrangement adopted by the wire. We also study the transport properties in the ballistic regime by computing the transmission coefficients and tracing them back to electronic conduction channels of the wire and the host. We predict that carbon nanotubes of appropriate radii encapsulating a Mo wire have metallic behavi…
Quasi-ballistic semiconductor quantum wires are exposed to localized perpendicular magnetic fields, also known as magnetic barriers. Pronounced, reproducible conductance fluctuations as a function of the magnetic barrier amplitude are observed. The fluctuations are strongly temperature dependent and remain visible up to temperatures of about 10 K. Simulations based on recursive Green functions suggest that the conductance fluctuations originate from parametric interferences of the electronic wave functions which experience scattering between the magnetic barrier and the electrostatic potential…
