Phase switching in a voltage-biased Aharonov-Bohm interferometer

Recent experiment [Sigrist et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 98}, 036805 (2007)] reported switches between 0 and $\pi$ in the phase of Aharonov-Bohm oscillations of the two-terminal differential conductance through a two-dot ring with increasing voltage bias. Using a simple model, where one of the dots contains multiple interacting levels, these findings are explained as a result of transport through the interferometer being dominated at different biases by quantum dot levels of different "parity" (i.e. the sign of the overlap integral between the dot state and the states in the leads). The redistribution of electron population between different levels with bias leads to the fact that the number of switching events is not necessarily equal to the number of dot levels, in agreement with experiment. For the same reason switching does not always imply that the parity of levels is strictly alternating. Lastly, it is demonstrated that the correlation between the first switching of the phase and the onset of the inelastic cotunneling, as well as the sharp (rather than gradual) change of phase when switching occurs, give reason to think that the present interpretation of the experiment is preferable to the one based on electrostatic AB effect.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure

Evidence for localization and 0.7 anomaly in hole quantum point contacts

Quantum point contacts implemented in p-type GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures are investigated by low-temperature electrical conductance spectroscopy measurements. Besides one-dimensional conductance quantization in units of $2e^{2}/h$ a pronounced extra plateau is found at about $0.7(2e^{2}/h)$ which possesses the characteristic properties of the so-called "0.7 anomaly" known from experiments with n-type samples. The evolution of the 0.7 plateau in high perpendicular magnetic field reveals the existence of a quasi-localized state and supports the explanation of the 0.7 anomaly based on self-consistent charge localization. These observations are robust when lateral electrical fields are applied which shift the relative position of the electron wavefunction in the quantum point contact, testifying to the intrinsic nature of the underlying physics.Comment: 4.2 pages, 3 figure

Spin-Orbit Assisted Variable-Range Hopping in Strong Magnetic Fields

It is shown that in the presence of strong magnetic fields, spin-orbit scattering causes a sharp increase in the effective density of states in the variable-range hopping regime when temperature decreases. This effect leads to an exponential enhancement of the conductance above its value without spin-orbit scattering. Thus an experimental study of the hopping conductivity in a fixed, large magnetic field, is a sensitive tool to explore the spin-orbit scattering parameters in the strongly localized regime.Comment: 9 pages + 2 figures (enclosed), Revte

Orbital Magnetism and Current Distribution of Two-Dimensional Electrons under Confining Potential

The spatial distribution of electric current under magnetic field and the resultant orbital magnetism have been studied for two-dimensional electrons under a harmonic confining potential V(\vecvar{r})=m \omega_0^2 r^2/2 in various regimes of temperature and magnetic field, and the microscopic conditions for the validity of Landau diamagnetism are clarified. Under a weak magnetic field (\omega_c\lsim\omega_0, \omega_c being a cyclotron frequency) and at low temperature (T\lsim\hbar\omega_0), where the orbital magnetic moment fluctuates as a function of the field, the currents are irregularly distributed paramagnetically or diamagnetically inside the bulk region. As the temperature is raised under such a weak field, however, the currents in the bulk region are immediately reduced and finally there only remains the diamagnetic current flowing along the edge. At the same time, the usual Landau diamagnetism results for the total magnetic moment. The origin of this dramatic temperature dependence is seen to be in the multiple reflection of electron waves by the boundary confining potential, which becomes important once the coherence length of electrons gets longer than the system length. Under a stronger field (\omega_c\gsim\omega_0), on the other hand, the currents in the bulk region cause de Haas-van Alphen effect at low temperature as T\lsim\hbar\omega_c. As the temperature gets higher (T\gsim\hbar\omega_c) under such a strong field, the bulk currents are reduced and the Landau diamagnetism by the edge current is recovered.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figure

Transmission Phase Shift of a Quantum Dot with Kondo Correlations

We study the effects of Kondo correlations on the transmission phase shift of a quantum dot in an Aharonov-Bohm ring. We predict in detail how the development of a Kondo resonance should affect the dependence of the phase shift on transport voltage, gate voltage and temperature. This system should allow the first direct observation of the well-known scattering phase shift of pi/2 expected (but not directly measurable in bulk systems) at zero temperature for an electron scattering off a spin-1/2 impurity that is screened into a singlet.Comment: 4 pages Revtex, 4 figures, final published versio

A new perturbation treatment applied to the transport through a quantum dot

Resonant tunnelling through an Anderson impurity is investigated by employing a new perturbation scheme at nonequilibrium. This new approach gives the correct weak and strong coupling limit in $U$ by introducing adjustable parameters in the self-energy and imposing self-consistency of the occupation number of the impurity. We have found that the zero-temperature linear response conductance agrees well with that obtained from the exact sum rule. At finite temperature the conductance shows a nonzero minimum at the Kondo valley, as shown in recent experiments. The effects of an applied bias voltage on the single-particle density of states and on the differential conductances are discussed for Kondo and non-Kondo systems.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PRB-Rapid Comm. Email addresses [email protected], [email protected]

Modified Perturbation Theory Applied to Kondo-Type Transport through a Quantum Dot under a Magnetic Field

Linear conductance through a quantum dot is calculated under a finite magnetic field using the modified perturbation theory. The method is based on the second-order perturbation theory with respect to the Coulomb repulsion, but the self-energy is modified to reproduce the correct atomic limit and to fulfill the Friedel sum rule exactly. Although this method is applicable only to zero temperature in a strict sense, it is approximately extended to finite temperatures. It is found that the conductance near electron-hole symmetry is suppressed by the application of the magnetic field at low temperatures. Positive magnetoconductance is observed in the case of large electron-hole asymmetry.Comment: 4pages, 5 figure

Delocalization of tightly bound excitons in disordered systems

The localization length of a low energy tightly bound electron-hole pair (excitons) is calculated by exact diagonalization for small interacting disordered systems. The exciton localization length (which corresponds to the thermal electronic conductance) is strongly enhanced by electron-electron interactions, while the localization length (pertaining to the charge conductance) is only slightly enhanced. This shows that the two particle delocalization mechanism widely discussed for the electron pair case is more efficient close to the Fermi energy for an electron-hole pair. The relevance to experiment is also discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures - old version was posted by mistak

A forward-backward splitting algorithm for the minimization of non-smooth convex functionals in Banach space

We consider the task of computing an approximate minimizer of the sum of a smooth and non-smooth convex functional, respectively, in Banach space. Motivated by the classical forward-backward splitting method for the subgradients in Hilbert space, we propose a generalization which involves the iterative solution of simpler subproblems. Descent and convergence properties of this new algorithm are studied. Furthermore, the results are applied to the minimization of Tikhonov-functionals associated with linear inverse problems and semi-norm penalization in Banach spaces. With the help of Bregman-Taylor-distance estimates, rates of convergence for the forward-backward splitting procedure are obtained. Examples which demonstrate the applicability are given, in particular, a generalization of the iterative soft-thresholding method by Daubechies, Defrise and De Mol to Banach spaces as well as total-variation based image restoration in higher dimensions are presented

Effects of nonorthogonality in the time-dependent current through tunnel junctions

A theoretical technique which allows to include contributions from non-orthogonality of the electron states in the leads connected to a tunneling junction is derived. The theory is applied to a single barrier tunneling structure and a simple expression for the time-dependent tunneling current is derived showing explicit dependence of the overlap. The overlap proves to be necessary for a better quantitative description of the tunneling current, and our theory reproduces experimental results substantially better compared to standard approaches.Comment: 4 pages, 1 table, 1 figur