Density of states in randomly shaped graphene quantum dots

By numerical diagonalization of honeycomb-lattice tight-binding Hamiltonian we calculate the density of state (DOS) of irregularly shaped graphene quantum dots fabricated in the form of graphene nano-flakes. The finite-size electron confinement and the edge states result in the central peak of DOS that is located at the zero-energy Dirac point. The amplitude and width of the peak are provided by the form of the graphene cluster, but no regular correlation with its shape was found.     

Current fluctuations in an interacting quantum dot

We calculate the counting statistics of electron transfer through an open quantum dot with charging interaction. A dot that is connected to leads by two single-channel quantum point contacts in an in-plane magnetic field is described by a Luttinger liquid with impurity at the Toulouse point. We find that the fluctuations of the current through this conductor exhibit distinctive interaction effects. Fluctuations saturate at high voltages, while the mean current increases linearly with the bias voltage. All cumulants higher than the second one reach at large bias a temperature independent limit.     

Tails of the density of states of two‐dimensional Dirac fermions

The density of states of Dirac fermions with a random mass on a two‐dimensional lattice is considered. We give the explicit asymptotic form of the single‐electron density of states as a function of both energy and (average) Dirac mass, in the regime where all states are localized. We make use of a weak‐disorder expansion in the parameter g/m², where g is the strength of disorder and m the average Dirac mass for the case in which the evaluation of the (supersymmetric) integrals corresponds to non‐uniform solutions of the saddle point equation. The resulting density of states has tails which deviate from the typical pure Gaussian form by an analytic prefactor.     

Density of states in the bilayer graphene with the excitonic pairing interaction

In the present paper, we consider the excitonic effects on the single particle normal density of states (DOS) in the bilayer graphene (BLG). The local interlayer Coulomb interaction is considered between the particles on the non-equivalent sublattice sites in different layers of the BLG. We show the presence of the excitonic shift of the neutrality point, even for the noninteracting layers. Furthermore, for the interacting layers, a very large asymmetry in the DOS structure is shown between the particle and hole channels. At the large values of the interlayer hopping amplitude, a large number of DOS at the Dirac’s point indicates the existence of the strong excitonic coherence effects between the layers in the BLG and the enhancement of the excitonic condensation. We have found different competing orders in the interacting BLG. Particularly, a phase transition from the hybridized excitonic insulator phase to the coherent condensate state is shown at the small values of the local interlayer Coulomb interaction.     

Nanoscale imaging of electronic surface transport probed by atom movements induced by scanning tunneling microscope current

The hopping movements of Cl atoms on a Si(111)-(7 x 7) surface that are enhanced by an electron injection from tips of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) exhibit a spatial spread from the electron injection point with an anisotropic distribution. The enhanced hopping effect becomes greatest at a sample bias voltage being resonant with the Si-Cl antibonding states and also exhibits an oscillatory decay with the distance from the injection point characterized by the wavelength depending on the bias voltage. All of these facts can be interpreted in terms of the coherent expansion of the electron wave packets locally formed at the STM tip.     

Sub-Poissonian shot noise in graphene

We calculate the mode-dependent transmission probability of massless Dirac fermions through an ideal strip of graphene (length L, width W, no impurities or defects) to obtain the conductance and shot noise as a function of Fermi energy. We find that the minimum conductivity of order e2/h at the Dirac point (when the electron and hole excitations are degenerate) is associated with a maximum of the Fano factor (the ratio of noise power and mean current). For short and wide graphene strips the Fano factor at the Dirac point equals 1/3, 3 times smaller than for a Poisson process. This is the same value as for a disordered metal, which is remarkable since the classical dynamics of the Dirac fermions is ballistic.     

Electronic band gap and transport in graphene superlattice with a Gaussian profile potential voltage

We study the electronic properties for the graphene-based one-dimensional superlattices, whose potential voltages vary according to the envelope of a Gaussian function. It is found that an unusual Dirac point exists and its location is exactly associated with a zero-averaged wave number （zero-re） gap. This zero-k gap is less sensitive to incident angle and lattice constants, properties opposing those of Bragg gap. The defect mode appearing inside the zero-l gap has an effect on transmission, conductance, and shot noise, which will be useful for further investigation.     

Memory Effect in the Charge Transport in Strongly Disordered Antimony Films

We study conductivity of strongly disordered amorphous antimony films under high bias voltages. We observe non-linear current-voltage characteristic, where the conductivity value at zero bias is one of two distinct values, being determined by the sign of previously applied voltage. Relaxation curves demonstrate high stability of these conductivity values on a large timescale. Investigations of the antimony film structure allows to determine the percolation character of electron transport in strongly disordered films. We connect the memory effect in conductivity with modification of the percolation pattern due to recharging of some film regions at high bias voltages.     

Radiation from electrons in graphene in strong electric field

We study the interaction of electrons in graphene with the quantized electromagnetic field in the presence of an applied uniform electric field using the Dirac model of graphene. Electronic states are represented by exact solutions of the Dirac equation in the electric background, and amplitudes of first-order Feynman diagrams describing the interaction with the photon field are calculated for massive Dirac particles in both valleys. Photon emission probabilities from a single electron and from a many-electron system at the charge neutrality point are derived, including the angular and frequency dependence, and several limiting cases are analyzed. The pattern of photon emission at the Dirac point in a strong field is determined by an interplay between the nonperturbative creation of electron–hole pairs and spontaneous emission, allowing for the possibility of observing the Schwinger effect in measurements of the radiation emitted by pristine graphene under DC voltage.     

Reversal of Klein reflection by magnetic barriers in bilayer graphene

Massless Dirac fermions in monolayer graphene exhibit total transmission when normally incident on a scalar potential barrier, a consequence of the Klein paradox originally predicted by O Klein for relativistic electrons obeying the 3 + 1 dimensional Dirac equation. For bilayer graphene, charge carriers are massive Dirac fermions and, due to different chiralities, electron and hole states are not coupled to each other. Therefore, the wavefunction of an incident particle decays inside a barrier as for the non-relativistic Schr?dinger equation. This leads to exponentially small transmission upon normal incidence. We show that, in the presence of magnetic barriers, such massive Dirac fermions can have transmission even at normal incidence. The general consequences of this behavior for multilayer graphene consisting of massless and massive modes are mentioned. We also briefly discuss the effect of a bias voltage on such magnetotransport.     

Quantum Hall effect of massless dirac fermions in a vanishing magnetic field

The effect of strong long-range disorder on the quantization of the Hall conductivity sigma{xy} in graphene is studied numerically. It is shown that increasing Landau-level mixing progressively destroys all plateaus in sigma{xy} except the plateaus at sigma{xy}=-/+e{2}/2h (per valley and per spin). The critical state at the Dirac point is robust to strong disorder and belongs to the universality class of the conventional plateau transitions in the integer quantum Hall effect. We propose that the breaking of time-reversal symmetry by ripples in graphene can realize this quantum critical point in a vanishing magnetic field.     

Two-dimensional intrinsic ferromagnetism at nitride-boride interfaces

We predict theoretically novel two-dimensional interface ferromagnetism at AlN/MgB(2)(0001) using first-principles calculations, where the interface is employed as an ordered structure of spin sites instead of point defects. Although N dangling bonds are apparently saturated, interfacial states exhibit spin polarization. Hund's coupling of the two N p(∥) orbitals as well as low density of states at the Fermi energy contribute to strong band ferromagnetism. Furthermore, first-principles electron transport calculations demonstrate that this interfacial spin polarization is responsible for quantum spin transport. The magnetization can be controlled by applied gate bias voltages.     

Rectification in Luttinger liquids

We investigate the rectification of an ac bias in Luttinger liquids in the presence of an asymmetric potential (the ratchet effect). We show that a strong repulsive electron interaction enhances the ratchet current in comparison with Fermi-liquid systems, and the dc I-V curve is strongly asymmetric in the low-voltage regime even for a weak asymmetric potential. At higher voltages the ratchet current exhibits an oscillatory voltage dependence.     

Physics of non-adiabatic transport and field-domain effect in quantum-well infrared photodetectors

A previous theory for studying the distribution of non-uniform fields in multiple-quantum-well photodetectors under an ac voltage is generalized by including non-adiabatic space-charge-field effects. Numerical calculations indicate that field-domain effects are only important at high temperatures or high voltages when both injection and sequential-tunneling currents are significant. On the other hand, it is found that the non-adiabatic effects included in this generalized theory become significant at low temperatures and low voltages when field-domain effects are negligible. In order to explain the non-adiabatic charge-density fluctuations quantum-statistically, a non-adiabatic differential equation is derived based on the self-consistent Hartree model by using a shifted Fermi–Dirac model for the local fluctuation of electron distributions. The non-adiabatic effect is found to cause an “equilibrium” state variation with time under an ac voltage.     

Broken-symmetry states of Dirac fermions in graphene with a partially filled high Landau level

We report on numerical study of the Dirac fermions in partially filled N=3 Landau level (LL) in graphene. At half-filling, the equal-time density-density correlation function displays sharp peaks at nonzero wave vectors +/-q*. Finite-size scaling shows that the peak value grows with electron number and diverges in the thermodynamic limit, which suggests an instability toward a charge density wave. A symmetry broken stripe phase is formed at large system size limit, which is robust against perturbation from disorder scattering. Such a quantum phase is experimentally observable through transport measurements. Associated with the special wave functions of the Dirac LL, both stripe and bubble phases become possible candidates for the ground state of the Dirac fermions in graphene with lower filling factors in the N=3 LL.     

Dynamical mean field study of the Dirac liquid

Renormalization is one of the basic notions of condensed matter physics. Based on the concept of renormalization, the Landau’s Fermi liquid theory has been able to explain, why despite the presence of Coulomb interactions, the free electron theory works so well for simple metals with extended Fermi surface (FS). The recent synthesis of graphene has provided the condensed matter physicists with a low energy laboratory of Dirac fermions where instead of a FS, one has two Fermi points. Many exciting phenomena in graphene can be successfully interpreted in terms of free Dirac electrons. In this paper, employing dynamical mean field theory (DMFT), we show that an interacting Dirac sea is essentially an effective free Dirac theory. This observation suggests the notion of Dirac liquid as a fixed point of interacting 2 + 1 dimensional Dirac fermions. We find one more fixed point at strong interactions describing a Mott insulating state, and address the nature of semi-metal to insulator (SMIT) transition in this system.     

Negative circular polarization of InP QD luminescence: Mechanism of formation and main regularities

The spectrum and kinetics of the circular polarization of InP quantum dot (QD) photoluminescence have been experimentally investigated under different conditions of optical excitation and at different bias voltages applied to the sample. It is established that, at a bias of about ?0.1 V, the degree of photoluminescence polarization is negative and reaches ?50% in limiting cases. It is concluded that the negative polarization is formed in QDs containing one recident electron per dot and is mainly caused by the optical orientation of the electron spin. It is shown that all experimentally observed regularities are well described in the framework of the model assuming the energy relaxation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs accompanied by the electron- hole spin flip-flop process.     

Growth of Ni-Mn-Ga high-temperature shape memory alloy thin films by magnetron sputtering technique

Ni-Mn-Ga thin films have been fabricated by using magnetron sputtering technique under various substrate negative bias voltages. The effect of substrate negative bias voltage on the compositions and surface morphology of Ni-Mn-Ga thin films was systematically investigated by energy dispersive X-ray spectrum and atomic force microscopy, respectively. The results show that the Ni contents of the thin films increase with the increase of the substrate negative bias voltages, whereas the Mn contents and Ga contents decrease with the increase of substrate negative bias voltages. It was also found that the surface roughness and average particle size of the thin films remarkably decrease with the increase of substrate negative bias voltages. Based on the influence of bias voltages on film compositions, a Ni₅₆Mn₂₇Ga₁₇ thin film was obtained at the substrate negative bias voltage of 30 V. Further investigations indicate that the martensitic transformation start temperature of this film is up to 584 K, much higher than room temperature, and the film has a non-modulated tetragonal martensitic structure at room temperature. Transmission electron microscopy observations reveal that microstructure of the thin film exhibits an internally (1 1 1) type twinned substructure. The fabrication of Ni₅₆Mn₂₇Ga₁₇ high-temperature shape memory alloy thin film will contribute to the successful development of microactuators.     

Demonstration of a new transport regime of photon in two-dimensional photonic crystal

A new transport regime of photon in two-dimensional photonic crystal near the Dirac point has been demonstrated by exact numerical simulation. In this regime, the conductance of photon is inversely proportional to the thickness of sample, which can be described by Dirac equation very well. Both of bulk and surface disorders always reduce the transmission, which is in contrast to the previous theoretical prediction that they increase the conductance of electron at the Dirac point of graphene. However, regular tuning of interface structures can cause the improvement of photon conductance. Furthermore, large conductance fluctuations of photon have also been observed, which is similar to the case of electron in graphene.