The defect corrections to polarization and dielectric functions of Bloch electrons in quantum wells are first calculated. Following this, we derive the first two moment equations from Boltzmann transport theory and apply them to explore defect effects on magneto-transport of Bloch electrons. Meanwhile, we obtain analytically the momentum-relaxation time and mobility tensor for Bloch electrons making use of the screened defect-corrected polarization function. Based on quantum-statistical theory, we further investigate the defect capture and charging dynamics by employing a parameterized physics model for defects to obtain defect wave functions. After this, both capture and relaxation rates, as well as density for captured Bloch electrons, are calculated self-consistently as functions of temperature, doping density and different defect types. By applying the energy-balance equation, the number of occupied energy levels and chemical potential of defects are determined, with which the transition rate for defect capturing is obtained. By using these results, defect energy-relaxation, capture and escape rates, and Bloch-electron chemical potential are obtained self-consistently. At the same time, the Bloch-electron energy- and momentum-relaxation rates, as well as the current suppression factor, are also investigated quantitatively. Finally, by combining all these studies together, the temperature dependence of the Hall and longitudinal mobilities is demonstrated for Bloch electrons in either single- or multi-quantum wells, which can be utilized for quantifying burst noise in transistors and blinking noise in photo-detectors.
The current through ferromagnetic single-electron transistors (SET's) is considered. Using path integrals the linear response conductance is formulated as a function of the tunnel conductance vs. quantum conductance and the temperature vs. Coulomb charging energy. The magneto-resistance of ferromagnet-normal metal-ferromagnet (F-N-F) SET's is almost independent of the Coulomb charging energy and is only reduced when the transport dwell time is longer than the spin-flip relaxation time. In all-ferromagnetic (F-F-F) SET's with negligible spin-flip relaxation time the magneto-resistance is calcul…
Here we report on fabrication and low temperature magnetotransport measurements of quantum point contacts patterned from a novel two-dimensional electron system - CdTe/CdMgTe modulation doped heterostructure. From the temperature and bias dependence we ascribe the reported data to evidence for a weakly bound state which is naturally formed inside a CdTe quantum constrictions due to charging effects. We argue that the spontaneous introduction of an open dot is responsible for the replacement of flat conductance plateaus by quasi-periodic resonances with amplitude less than 2e^{2}/h, as found in…
We study transport through a ferromagnetic single-electron transistor. The resistance is represented as a path integral, so that systems where the tunnel resistances are smaller than the quantum resistance can be investigated. Beyond the low order sequential tunneling and co-tunneling regimes, a large magnetoresistance ratio at sufficiently low temperatures is found. In the opposite limit, when the thermal energy is larger than the charging energy, the magnetoresistance ratio is only slightly enhanced.
We develop a mesoscopic approach to model the non-equilibrium behavior of membranes at the cellular scale. Relying on lattice Boltzmann methods, we develop a solution procedure to recover the Nernst-Planck equations and Gauss's law. A general closure rule is developed to describe mass transport across the membrane, which is able to account for protein-mediated diffusion based on a coarse-grained representation. We demonstrate that our model is able to recover the Goldman equation from first principles and show that hyper-polarization occurs when membrane charging dynamics are controlled by mul…
We study spin-polarized transient transport in a quantum dot coupled to two ferromagnetic leads subjected to a rectangular bias voltage pulse. Time-dependent spin-resolved currents, occupations, spin accumulation, and tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) are calculated using both nonequilibrium Green function and master equation techniques. Both parallel and antiparallel leads' magnetization alignments are analyzed. Our main findings are: a dynamical spin accumulation that changes sign in time, a short-lived pulse of spin polarized current in the emitter lead (but not in the collector lead), and …
We study the effect of magnetic anisotropy in a single electron transistor with ferromagnetic electrodes and a non-magnetic island. We identify the variation $δμ$ of the chemical potential of the electrodes as a function of the magnetization orientation as a key quantity that permits to tune the electrical properties of the device. Different effects occur depending on the relative size of $δμ$ and the charging energy. We provide preliminary quantitative estimates of $δμ$ using a very simple toy model for the electrodes.
Low temperature magnetoconductance measurements were made in the vicinity of the charge neutrality point. Two origins for the fluctuations were identified close to the CNP. At very low magnetic fields there exist only mesoscopic magneto-conductance quantum interference features which develop rapidly as a function of density. At slightly higher fields (> 0.5T), close to the CNP, additional fluctuations track the quantum Hall sequence expected for monolayer graphene. These additional features are attributed to effects of locally charging individual quantum Hall (QH) localized states. These effec…
We investigate magneto-transport through graphene nano-ribbons as a function of gate and bias voltage, and temperature. We find that a magnetic field systematically leads to an increase of the conductance on a scale of a few tesla. This phenomenon is accompanied by a decrease in the energy scales associated to charging effects, and to hopping processes probed by temperature-dependent measurements. All the observations can be interpreted consistently in terms of strong-localization effects caused by the large disorder present, and exclude that the insulating state observed in nano-ribbons can b…
The magneto-Coulomb oscillation, the single electron repopulation induced by external magnetic field, observed in a ferromagnetic single electron transistor is further examined in various ferromagnetic single electron devices. In case of double- and triple-junction devices made of Ni and Co electrodes, the single electron repopulation always occurs from Ni to Co electrodes with increasing a magnetic field, irrespective of the configurations of the electrodes. The period of the magneto-Coulomb oscillation is proportional to the single electron charging energy. All these features are consistentl…
The interplay between spin and charge in solids is currently among the most discussed topics in condensed matter physics. Such interplay gives rise to magneto-electric coupling, which in the case of solids was named magneto-electric effect, as predicted by Curie on the basis of symmetry considerations. This effect enables the manipulation of magnetization using electrical field or, conversely, the manipulation of electrical polarization by magnetic field. The latter is known as the magnetocapacitance effect. Here, we show that non-equilibrium spin accumulation can induce tunnel magnetocapacita…
The conductance through a finite quantum dot network is studied as a function of inter-dot coupling. As the coupling is reduced, the system undergoes a transition from the antidot regime to the tight binding limit, where Coulomb resonances with on average increasing charging energies are observed. Percolation models are used to describe the conduction in the open and closed regime and contributions from different blockaded regions can be identified. A strong negative average magnetoresistance in the Coulomb blockade regime is in good quantitative agreement with theoretical predictions for magn…
Magneto photoluminescence and excitation spectroscopy are used to probe the excited state spectrum of negatively charged trions in a InGaAs quantum dot. A single dot optical charging device allows us to selectively prepare specific few (1e, 2e) electron states and stabilize hot trions against decay via electron tunnelling from excited orbital states. The spin structure of the excited state results in the formation of metastable trions with strong optical activity that are directly observed in luminescence. Excitation spectroscopy is employed to map the excited singlet and triplet states of the…
To study the influence of microwave irradiation on two-dimensional electrons, we apply a method based on capacitance measurements in GaAs quantum well samples where the gate covers a central part of the layer. We find that the capacitance oscillations at high magnetic fields, caused by the oscillations of thermodynamic density of states, are not essentially modified by microwaves. However, in the region of fields below 1 Tesla, we observe another set of oscillation, with the period and the phase identical to those of microwave induced resistance oscillations. The phenomenon of microwave induce…
We present a detailed investigation into the optical characteristics of individual InAs quantum dots (QDs) grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition, with low temperature emission in the telecoms window around 1300 nm. Using micro-photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy we have identified neutral, positively charged, and negatively charged exciton and biexciton states. Temperature-dependent measurements reveal dot-charging effects due to differences in carrier diffusivity. We observe a pronounced linearly polarized splitting of the neutral exciton and biexciton lines (~250 ueV) resulting fro…
Quantum Hall (QH) interferometry provides an archetypal platform for the experimental realization of braiding statistics of fractional QH states. However, the complexity of observing fractional statistics requires phase coherence over the length of the interferometer, as well as suppression of Coulomb charging energy. Here, we demonstrate a new type of QH interferometer based on marginally twisted bilayer graphene (mtBLG), with a twist angle $θ$ $\approx$ $0.16$ $^{\circ}$. With the device operating in the QH regime, we observe distinct signatures of electronic Fabry-Pérot (FP) and Aharonov-Bo…
Spin dependent transport in a ferromagnet/superconductor/ferromagnet single electron transistor is studied theoretically with spin accumulation, spin relaxation, gap suppression, and charging effects taken into account. A strong dependence of the gap on the magnetic state of the outer electrodes is found, which gives rise to a negative magneto-resistance of up to 100 %. We predict that fluctuations of the spin accumulation due to tunneling of quasi-particles can play such an important role as to cause the island to fluctuate between the superconducting
Electron tunneling in ferromagnetic single-electron transistors is considered theoretically in the sequential tunneling regime. A new formalism is developed, which operates in a two-dimensional space of states, instead of one-dimensiona space used in the spinless case. It is shown that spin fluctuations can be significantly larger than the charge fluctuations. The influence of discrete energy spectrum of a small central electrode on tunneling current, charge and spin accumulation, charge and spin fluctuations, and on tunnel magnetoresistance is analyzed in details. Two different scales are fou…
By use of magneto-photoluminescence spectroscopy we demonstrate bias controlled single-electron charging of a single quantum dot. Neutral, single, and double charged excitons are identified in the optical spectra. At high magnetic fields one Zeeman component of the single charged exciton is found to be quenched, which is attributed to the competing effects of tunneling and spin-flip processes. Our experimental data are in good agreement with theoretical model calculations for situations where the spatial extent of the hole wave functions is smaller as compared to the electron wave functions.
Resistance fluctuation phenomenon in antidot lattices in the quantum Hall regime are studied. Magnetoresistance of finite antidot array systems in the quantum Hall plateau transition regime exhibits two types of oscillatory effect. One is the aperiodic resistance fluctuations (RFs) and the other is the Aharonov-Bohm (AB)-type oscillations. Their dependences on the magnetic field and the gate voltage are quite distinct. While the aperiodic RFs are attributed to the complex evolution of the conducting network of compressible channels, the AB-type oscillations are interpreted in terms of edge sta…
We simulated electron transport across a binary nanocrystal solid (BNS) of PbSe NCs with diameters of 6.5nm and 5.1nm. We used our Hierarchical Nanoparticle Transport Simulator HINTS to model the transport in these BNSs. The mobility exhibits a minimum at a Large-NC-fraction f_LNC=0.25. The mobility minimum is deep at T=80K and partially smoothed at T=300K. We explain this minimum as follows. As the LNC fraction f_LNC starts growing from zero, the few LNCs act as traps for the electrons traversing the BNS because their relevant energy level is lower. Therefore, increasing the f_LNC concentrati…
We demonstrate a reconfigurable quantum dot gate architecture that incorporates two interchangeable transport channels. One channel is used to form quantum dots and the other is used for charge sensing. The quantum dot transport channel can support either a single or a double quantum dot. We demonstrate few-electron occupation in a single quantum dot and extract charging energies as large as 6.6 meV. Magnetospectroscopy is used to measure valley splittings in the range of 35-70 microeV. By energizing two additional gates we form a few-electron double quantum dot and demonstrate tunable tunnel …
We report on an instrument for applying ac and dc magnetic fields by capturing the flux from a rotating permanent magnet and projecting it between two adjustable pole pieces. This can be an alternative to standard electromagnets for experiments with small samples or in probe stations in which an applied magnetic field is needed locally, with advantages that include a compact form-factor, very low power requirements and dissipation as well as fast field sweep rates. This flux capture instrument (FLUXCAP) can produce fields from -400 to +400 mT, with field resolution less than 1 mT. It generates…
An important consequence of the discovery of giant magnetoresistance in metallic magnetic multilayers is a broad interest in spin dependent effects in electronic transport through magnetic nanostructures. An example of such systems are tunnel junctions -- single-barrier planar junctions or more complex ones. In this review we present and discuss recent theoretical results on electron and spin transport through ferromagnetic mesoscopic junctions including two or more barriers. Such systems are also called ferromagnetic single-electron transistors. We start from the situation when the central pa…
A quantum transport model incorporating spin scattering processes is presented using the non-equilibrium Green's function (NEGF) formalism within the self-consistent Born approximation. This model offers a unified approach by capturing the spin-flip scattering and the quantum effects simultaneously. A numerical implementation of the model is illustrated for magnetic tunnel junction devices with embedded magnetic impurity layers. The results are compared with experimental data, revealing the underlying physics of the coherent and incoherent transport regimes. It is shown that small variations i…
