We investigate nonequilibrium phenomena in magnetic nano-junctions using a numerical approach that combines classical spin dynamics with the hierarchical equations of motion technique for quantum dynamics of conduction electrons. Our focus lies on the spin dynamics, where we observe non-monotonic behavior in the spin relaxation rates as a function of the coupling strength between the localized spin and conduction electrons. Notably, we identify a distinct maximum at intermediate coupling strength, which we attribute to a competition that involves the increasing influence of the coupling between the classical spin and electrons, as well as the influence of decreasing local density of states at the Fermi level. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the spin dynamics of a large open system can be accurately simulated by a short chain coupled to semi-infinite metallic leads. In the case of a magnetic junction subjected to an external DC voltage, we observe resonant features in the spin relaxation, reflecting the electronic spectrum of the system. The precession of classical spin gives rise to additional side energies in the electronic spectrum, which in turn leads to a broadened range of enhanced damping in the voltage.
We show that a current-carrying coherent electron conductor can be treated as effective bosonic energy reservoir involving different types of electron-hole pair excitation. For weak electron-boson coupling, hybrid energy transport between nonequilibrium electrons and bosons can be described by a Landauer-like formula. This allows for unified account of a variety of heat transport problems in hybrid electron-boson systems. As applications, we study the non-reciprocal heat transport between electrons and bosons, thermoelectric current from a cold-spot and electronic cooling of the bosons. Our un…
We examine the effect of a hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) substrate on electron transport through graphene nanojunctions just before gap formation. Junctions in vacuum and on hBN are formed using classical molecular dynamics to create initial structures, followed by relaxation using density functional theory. We find that the hBN only slightly reduces the current through the junctions at low biases. Furthermore due to quantum interference at the last moments of breaking, the current though a single carbon filament spanning the gap is found to be higher than the current through two filaments spa…
We show that in the presence of ferromagnetic electronic reservoirs and spin-dependent tunnel couplings, molecular vibrations in nonmagnetic single molecular transistors induce an effective intramolecular exchange magnetic field. It generates a finite spin-accumulation and -precession for the electrons confined on the molecular bridge and occurs under (non)equilibrium conditions. The effective exchange magnetic field is calculated here to lowest order in the tunnel coupling for a nonequilibrium transport setup. Coulomb interaction between electrons is taken into account as well as a finite ele…
We study the statistics of thermal energy transfer in the nonequilibrium (two-bath) spin-boson model. This quantum many-body impurity system serves as a canonical model for quantum energy transport. Our method makes use of the Majorana fermion representation for the spin operators, in combination with the Keldysh nonequilibrium Green's function approach. We derive an analytical expression for the cumulant generating function of the model in the steady state limit, and show that it satisfies the Gallavotti-Cohen fluctuation symmetry. We obtain analytical expressions for the heat current and its…
We study the dynamics of the electron current in nanodevices where there are time-varying components and interactions. These devices are a nanojunction attached to heat baths and with dynamical electron-phonon interactions and a nanojunction with photon beams incident and reflected at the channel. We use the two-time nonequilibrium Green's functions technique to calculate the time-dependent electron current flowing across the devices. We find that whenever a sudden change occurs in the device, the current takes time to react to the abrupt change, overshoots, oscillates, and eventually settles …
The fast decay of carrier inversion in photoexcited graphene has been attributed to optical phonon emission and Auger recombination. Plasmon emission provides another pathway that, as we show here, drives the carrier relaxation dynamics on ultrafast timescales. In studying the nonequilibrium relaxation dynamics we find that plasmon emission effectively converts inversion into hot carriers, whose energy is then extracted by optical phonon emission. This mechanism not only explains the observed fs-lifetime of inversion but also offers the prospect for atomically thin ultrafast plasmon emitters.
We study theoretically nonequilibrium Landau-Zener-Stückelberg (LZS) dynamics in a driven double quantum dot (DQD) including dephasing and, importantly, energy relaxation due to environmental fluctuations. We derive effective nonequilibrium Bloch equations. These allow us to identify clear signatures for LZS oscilations observed but not recognized as such in experiments [Petersson et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 246804, 2010] and to identify the full environmental fluctuation spectra acting on a DQD given experimental data as in [Petersson et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 246804, 2010]. Herein we f…
We show that nonequilibrium spin fluctuations significantly influence the electronic transport in a single-electron transistor, when the spin relaxation on the island is slow compared to other relaxation processes, and when size effects play a role. To describe spin fluctuations we generalize the `orthodox' tunneling theory to take into account the electron spin, and show that the transition between consecutive charge states can occur via a high-spin state. This significantly modifies the shape of Coulomb steps and gives rise to additional resonances at low temperatures. Recently some of our p…
The interaction between electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom is an important mechanism in nonequilibrium charge transport through molecular nanojunctions. While adiabatic polaron-type coupling has been studied in great detail, new transport phenomena arise for nonadiabatic coupling scenarios corresponding to a breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. Employing the numerically exact hierarchical equations of motion approach, we analyze the effect of nonadiabatic electronic-vibrational coupling on electron transport in molecular junctions considering a series of models with incr…
We study phonons generated by current in a Pt nanowire, by measuring resistance of another nanowire separated from the first one by an insulating spacer. For thin spacers, the resistance varies almost linearly with current at cryogenic temperatures, while an additional quadratic contribution emerges for thicker spacers. These observations suggest a non-thermal distribution of current-generated phonons that relax via strongly nonlinear dynamical processes rather than few-phonon scattering. Our results provide insight into the nonequilibrium phonon dynamics at nanoscale, which may facilitate eff…
Rapid development of micro- and nanofabrication methods have provoked interest and enabled experimental studies of electronic properties of a vast class of (sub)micrometer-size solid state systems. Mesoscopic-size hybrid structures, containing superconducting elements, have become interesting objects for basic research studies and various applications, ranging from medical and astrophysical sensors to quantum computing. One of the most important aspects of physics, governing the behavior of such systems, is the finite concentration of nonequilibrium quasiparticles, present in a superconductor …
Electron-electron thermalization and electron-phonon relaxation processes in laser-excited solids are often assumed to occur on different timescales. This is true for the majority of the conduction band electrons in a metal. However, electron-phonon interactions can influence the thermalization process of the excited electrons. We study the interplay of the underlying scattering mechanisms for the case of a noble metal with help of a set of complete Boltzmann collision integrals. We trace the transient electron distribution in copper and its deviations from a Fermi-Dirac distribution due to th…
We investigate electronic distributions in nonequilibrium tunnel junctions subject to a high voltage bias $V$ under competing electron-electron and electron-phonon relaxation processes. We derive conditions for reaching quasi-equilibrium and show that, though the distribution can still be thermal for low energies where the rate of the electron-electron relaxation exceeds significantly the electron-phonon relaxation rate, it develops a power-law tail at energies of order of $eV$. In a general case of comparable electron-electron and electron-phonon relaxation rates, this tail leads to emission …
We present a two-current-pulse temporal correlation experiment to study the intrinsic subnanosecond nonequilibrium magnetic dynamics of a nanomagnet during and following a pulse excitation. This method is applied to a model spin-transfer system, a spin valve nanopillar with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. Two-pulses separated by a short delay (< 500 ps) are shown to lead to the same switching probability as a single pulse with a duration that depends on the delay. This demonstrates a remarkable symmetry between magnetic excitation and relaxation and provides a direct measurement of the magn…
Nonadiabatic Dynamics of Molecules Interacting with Metal Surfaces: A Quantum-Classical Approach Based on Langevin Dynamics and the Hierarchical Equations of Motion
We present a formalism for studying the behaviour of quantum systems coupled to nonequilibrium environments exhibiting nonGaussian fluctuations. We discuss the role of a qubit as a detector of the statistics of environmental fluctuations, as well as nonMarkovian effects in both weak and strong coupling limits. We also discuss the differences between the influences of classical and quantum environments. As examples of the application of this formalism we study the dephasing and relaxation of a charge qubit coupled to nonequillibrium electron transport through single and double quantum dots.
Nonequilibrium electronic transport through a polymer chain is investigated by the scattering state operator method. The polymer chain is described by an electron-lattice coupling model and its two ends are connected with metal electrodes of different chemical potentials. The scattering states are shown to be a set of complete eigenstates of electrons in the system at nonequilibrium steady state. With the method, we show that the nonequilibrium Peierls transition (NEPT) does not survive the lattice relaxation and the soliton-antisoliton pair excitations. Furthermore the electronic transport th…
We study the energy relaxation of quasiparticles in voltage biased mesoscopic wires in presence of magnetic impurities. The renormalization of the exchange interaction of Kondo impurities coupled to conduction electrons is extended to the case of a nonequilibrium electron distribution, which is determined self-consistently from a Boltzmann equation with a collision term due to Kondo impurity mediated electron-electron scattering. The approach leads to predictions in quantitative agreement with recent experiments by Pothier et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 3490 (1997)].
We investigate the effects of nonequilibrium phonon dynamics on the operation of a GaAs-based midinfrared quantum cascade laser over a range of temperatures (77--300 K) via a coupled ensemble Monte Carlo simulation of electron and optical-phonon systems. Nonequilibrium phonon effects are shown to be important below 200 K. At low temperatures, nonequilibrium phonons enhance injection selectivity and efficiency by drastically increasing the rate of interstage electron scattering from the lowest injector state to the next-stage upper lasing level via optical-phonon absorption. As a result, the cu…
We develop a theory of far from the equilibrium transport in arrays of tunnel junctions. We find that if the rate of the electron-electron interactions exceeds the rate of the electron-phonon energy exchange, the energy relaxation ensuring the charge transfer may occur sequentially. In particular, cotunneling transport in arrays of junctions is dominated by the relaxation via the intermediate bosonic environment, the electron-hole excitations, rather than by the electron-phonon mechanism. The current-voltage characteristics are highly sensitive to the spectrum of the environmental modes and to…
We investigate the effects of voltage induced spin-relaxation in a quantum dot in the Kondo regime. Using nonequilibrium perturbation theory, we determine the joint effect of self-energy and vertex corrections to the conduction electron T-matrix in the limit of transport voltage much larger than temperature. The logarithmic divergences, developing near the different chemical potentials of the leads, are found to be cut off by spin-relaxation rates, implying that the nonequilibrium Kondo-problem remains at weak coupling as long as voltage is much larger than the Kondo temperature.
Under continuous-wave laser excitation in an InGaAs multi-quantum-well (MQW) structure, the carrier temperature extracted from photoluminescence rises faster for 405 nm excitation compared with 980 nm excitation, as the injected carrier density increases. Ensemble Monte Carlo simulation of the carrier dynamics in the MQW system shows that this carrier temperature rise is dominated by nonequilibrium LO phonon effects, with the Pauli exclusion having a significant effect at high carrier densities. Further, we find a significant fraction of carriers reside in the satellite L-valleys for 405 nm ex…
We solve the nonequilibrium dynamics of qubits or quantum spin chains (s=1/2) modeled by an anisotropic XY Hamiltonian, when the initial condition is prepared as a spatially inhomogeneous state of the magnetization. Infinite systems are studied analytically, yielding a universal relaxation driven by quantum fluctuations. Particular long-lived excitations are found, for which the relaxation time diverges as a consequence of constructive quantum interference at degenerate stationary points. Those states are intrinsically entangled and may be of interest for performing quantum computation. We als…
Motivated by recent experiments on molecular quantum dots we investigate the relaxation of pure spin states when coupled to metallic leads. Under suitable conditions these systems are well described by a ferromagnetic Kondo model. Using two recently developed theoretical approaches, the time-dependent numerical renormalization group and an extended ow equation method, we calculate the real-time evolution of a Kondo spin into its partially screened steady state. We obtain exact analytical results which agree well with numerical implementations of both methods. Analytical expressions for the ste…
A theory of spin transport and spin detection in Zeeman-split superconducting films at low temperatures is developed. It is shown that an injection of spin-unpolarized quasiparticles into a Zeeman-split superconductor gives rise to a spin imbalance. The relaxation length of such a spin signal is determined by the energy relaxation length and can be extremely large as compared to the relaxation length of spin-polarized quasiparticles. There can exist two types of signals: due to nonthermalized quasiparticle distribution and due to thermalized overheated electron distribution. They have differen…
We investigate the time-dependent Kondo effect in a single-molecule magnet (SMM) strongly coupled to metallic electrodes. Describing the SMM by a Kondo model with large spin S > 1/2, we analyze the underscreening of the local moment and the effect of anisotropy terms on the relaxation dynamics of the magnetization. Underscreening by single-channel Kondo processes leads to a logarithmically slow relaxation, while finite uniaxial anisotropy causes a saturation of the SMM's magnetization. Additional transverse anisotropy terms induce quantum spin tunneling and a pseudospin-1/2 Kondo effect sensit…
We theoretically investigate a manipulation method of nonequilibrium spin accumulation in the paramagnetic normal metal of a spin pumping system, by using the spin precession motion combined with the spin diffusion transport. We demonstrate based on the Bloch-Torrey equation that the direction of the nonequilibrium spin accumulation is changed by applying an additional external magnetic field, and consequently, the inverse spin Hall voltage in an adjacent paramagnetic heavy metal changes its sign. We find that the spin relaxation time and the spin diffusion length are simultaneously determined…
We utilize a hybrid quantum-classical equation of motion approach to investigate the spin dynamics and spin-transfer torque in a spin valve under bias voltage. We show that the interplay between localized classical magnetic moments and conduction electrons induces a complex effective exchange coupling between the magnetic layers. This leads to a declination of magnetizations from layers anisotropy axes even in equilibrium. Introducing a finite bias voltage triggers spin currents and related spin-transfer torques which further tilt the magnetizations and govern the relaxation processes of the s…
We study nonequilibrium charge transport in a double-barrier Josephson junction, including nonstationary phenomena, using the time-dependent quasiclassical Keldysh Green's function formalism. We supplement the kinetic equations by appropriate time-dependent boundary conditions and solve the time-dependent problem in a number of regimes. From the solutions, current-voltage characteristics are derived. It is understood why the quasiparticle current can show excess current as well as deficit current and how the subgap conductance behaves as function of junction parameters. A time-dependent nonequ…
Understanding the effects of nonequilibrium on strongly interacting quantum systems is a challenging problem in condensed matter physics. In dimensions greater than one, interacting electrons can often be understood within Fermi-liquid theory where low-energy excitations are weakly interacting quasiparticles. On the contrary, electrons in one dimension are known to form a strongly-correlated phase of matter called a Luttinger liquid (LL), whose low-energy excitations are collective density waves, or plasmons, of the electron gas. Here we show that spectroscopy of locally injected high-energy e…
We study the effects of spin-orbit interaction (SOI) on the current-induced motion of a magnetic (Bloch) domain wall in ultrathin ferromagnetic nanowires. The conspiracy of spin relaxation and SOI is shown to generate a novel strong nonequilibrium Rashba field, which is dominant even for moderate SOI. This field causes intricate spin precession and a transition from translatory to oscillatory wall dynamics with increasing SOI. We show that current pulses of different lengths can efficiently be used to control the domain wall motion.
In a superconductor coupled with a ferromagnetic metal, spin and charge imbalances can be induced by injecting spin-polarized electron current from the ferromagnetic metal. We theoretically study a nonequilibrium distribution of quasiparticles in the presence of spin and charge imbalances. We show that four distribution functions are needed to characterize such a nonequilibrium situation, and derive a set of linearized Boltzmann equations for them by extending the argument by Schmid and Schön based on the quasiclassical Green's function method. Using the Boltzmann equations, we analyze the spi…
