Delta-doped quantum wire tunnel junction for highly concentrated solar cells

We propose a novel structure for tunnel junction based on delta-doped AlGaAs/GaAs quantum wires. Higher spatial confinement of quantum wires alongside the increased effective doping concentration in the delta-doped regions extremely increase the peak tunneling current and enhance the performance of tunnel junction. The proposed structure can be used as tunnel junction in the multijunction solar cells under the highest possible thermodynamically limited solar concentration.The combination of the quantum wire with the delta-doped structure can be of benefit to the solar cells' advantages including higher number of sub-bands and high degeneracy. Simulation results show a voltage drop of 40 mV due to the proposed tunnel junction used in a multijunction solar cell which presents an extremely low resistance to the achieved peak tunneling current.     

Transport Characteristics of Mesoscopic Radio-Frequency Single Electron Transistor

The transport property of a quantum dot under the influence of external time-dependent field is investigated. The mesoscopic device is modelled as semiconductor quantum dot coupled weakly to superconducting leads via asymmetric double tunnel barriers of different heights. An expression for the current is deduced by using the Landauer-Buttiker formula, taking into consideration of both the Coulomb blockade effect and the magnetic field. It is found that the periodic oscillation of the current with the magnetic field is controlled by the ratio of the frequency of the applied ac-field to the electron cyclotron frequency. Our results show that the present device operates as a radio-frequency single electron transistor.     

Coherent quantum transport in normal-metal/d-wave superconductor/normal-metal double tunnel junctions

Taking into account the effects of quantum interference and interface scattering, combining the electron current with hole current contribution to tunnel current,we study the coherent quantum transport in normal-metal/d-wave superconductor/normal-metal (NM/d-wave SC/NM) double tunnel junctions by using extended Blonder-Tinkham-Klapwijk (BTK) approach. It is shown that all quasiparticle transport coefficients and conductance spectrum exhibit oscillating behavior with the energy, in which periodic vanishing of Andreev reflection (AR) above superconducting gap is found.In tunnel limit for the interface scattering strength taken very large, there are a series of bound states of quasiparticles formed in SC.     

Tunneling current spectroscopy of a nanostructure junction involving multiple energy levels

A multilevel Anderson model is employed to simulate the system of a nanostructure tunnel junction with any number of one-particle energy levels. The tunneling current, including both shell-tunneling and shell-filling cases, is theoretically investigated via the nonequilibrium Green's function method. We obtain a closed form for the spectral function, which is used to analyze the complicated tunneling current spectra of a quantum dot or molecule embedded in a double-barrier junction. We also show that negative differential conductance can be observed in a quantum dot tunnel junction when the Coulomb interactions with neighboring quantum dots are taken into account.     

Coherent quantum transport in normal-metal/<Emphasis Type="Italic">d</Emphasis>-wave superconductor/normal-metal double tunnel junctions

Taking into account the effects of quantum interference and interface scattering, combining the electron current with hole current contribution to tunnel current, we study the coherent quantum transport in normal-metal/d-wave superconductor/ normal-metal (NM/d-wave SC/NM) double tunnel junctions by using extended Blonder-Tinkham-Klapwijk (BTK) approach. It is shown that all quasiparticle transport coefficients and conductance spectrum exhibit oscillating behavior with the energy, in which periodic vanishing of Andreev reflection (AR) above superconducting gap is found. In tunnel limit for the interface scattering strength taken very large, there are a series of bound states of quasiparticles formed in SC.     

Experimental evidence and consequences of rare events in quantum tunneling

Tiny spatial fluctuations of tunnel barrier parameters are shown to have dramatic consequences on the statistical properties of quantum tunneling. A direct experimental evidence is provided that the tunnel current through metal-oxide junctions, imaged at a nanometric scale, exhibits broad statistical distributions extending over more than 4 orders of magnitude. Striking effects of broad current distributions are shown: the total tunnel transmission is dominated by few highly transmitting sites and the typical current density varies strongly with the size of the junction. Moreover, self-averaging of the tunnel current fluctuations occurs only for unexpectedly large junction areas. Received 1 April 1999     

InAs自组装量子点GaAs肖特基二级管的电学特性研究

分析研究了GaAsInAs自组装量子点的电输运性质,通过对实验数据的分析,讨论了Schottky势垒对InAs量子点器件的影响和IV曲线中迟滞回路以及电导曲线中台阶结构产生的原因.迟滞回路和台阶的出现与电场中量子点的充放电过程相关:迟滞回路反映了量子点充电后对载流子的库仑作用,而电导台阶则反映了量子点因共振隧穿的放电现象 关键词： 迟滞现象 自组装量子点 共振隧穿     

Tunnel magnetotransport in heterostructures with quantum rings

A tunnel current through a heterostructure whose barrier contains quantum rings is calculated. The plane of the rings is parallel to the barrier interface. In a magnetic field perpendicular to this plane, a tunnel current at a fixed bias experiences Aharonov-Bohm oscillations under the variation of magnetic flux through a ring; however, these oscillations are not strictly periodic.     

Topological quantization of current in quantum tunnel contacts

It is shown that an account of the Berry phase (a topological ϑ-term), together with a dissipative term in the effective action S[ϕ] of the tunnel contacts, induces a strong quantization of the tunnel current at low temperatures. This phenomenon, as the Coulomb blockade, reflects a discrete charge structure of the quantum shot noise and can ensure a quantization of the tunnel current without a capacitive charging energy E _C when the latter is strongly suppressed by quantum fluctuations. Since the value of the ϑ parameter is determined by the gate voltage, this effect allows us to control the current through the contact. A possible physical application of this effect is proposed. The text was submitted by the author in English.     

Landau-level spectroscopy of a two-dimensional electron system by tunneling through a quantum dot

A single InAs self-assembled quantum dot is incorporated in the barrier of a tunnel diode and used as a spectroscopic probe of an adjacent two-dimensional electron system from the Fermi energy to the subband edge. We obtain quantitative information about the energy dependence of the quasiparticle lifetime. For magnetic field B, applied parallel to the current, we observe peaks in the current-voltage characteristics I(V) corresponding to the formation of Landau levels. Close to filling factor nu=1 we observe directly the exchange enhancement of the Lande g factor.     

Negative tunnel magnetoresistance in a quantum dot induced by interplay of a Majorana fermion and thermal-driven ferromagnetic leads

We investigate the spin-related currents and tunnel magnetoresistance through a quantum dot, which is side-coupled with a Majorana fermion zero mode and two thermal-driven ferromagnetic electrodes. It is found that the interplay of Majorana fermion and electrodes' spin polarization can induce a nonlinear thermal-bias spin current. This interplay also decreases the total magnitude of spin or charge current, in either parallel or antiparallel configuration. In addition, a thermal-driven negative tunnel magnetoresistance is found, which is an unique feature to characterize Majorana fermion.With large temperature difference, a step phenomenon is observed in gate tuned spin-up current. When the coupling between quantum dot and topological superconductor is strong enough, this step will evolve into a linear relation, revealing Majorana fermion's robustness.     

Quantum-limited sensitivity of single-electron-transistor-based displacement detectors

We consider a model of a quantum-mechanical resonator capacitively coupled to a single electron transistor (SET). The tunnel current in the SET is modulated by the vibrations of the resonator, and thus the system operates as a displacement detector. We analyze the effect of the backaction noise of charge fluctuations in the SET onto the dynamics of the resonator and evaluate the displacement sensitivity of the system. The relation between the "classical" and "quantum" parts of the SET charge noise and their effect on the measured system are also discussed.     

Nonadiabatic two-parameter charge and spin pumping in a quantum dot

We study dc charge and spin transport through a weakly coupled quantum dot, driven by a nonadiabatic periodic change of system parameters. We generalize the model of Tien and Gordon to simultaneously oscillating voltages and tunnel couplings. When applying our general result to the two-parameter charge pumping in quantum dots, we find interference effects between the oscillations of the voltage and tunnel couplings. We show that these interference effects may explain recent measurements in metallic islands. Furthermore, we discuss the possibility to electrically pump a spin current in presence of a static magnetic field.     

Optically probing spin and charge interactions in a tunable artificial molecule

We optically probe and electrically control a single artificial molecule containing a well defined number of electrons. Charge and spin dependent interdot quantum couplings are probed optically by adding a single electron-hole pair and detecting the emission from negatively charged exciton states. Coulomb- and Pauli-blockade effects are directly observed, and tunnel coupling and electrostatic charging energies are independently measured. The interdot quantum coupling is shown to be mediated by electron tunneling. Our results are in excellent accord with calculations that provide a complete picture of negative excitons and few-electron states in quantum dot molecules.     

A charge-current switch manipulated by the macroscopic quantum coherence of a single-molecule magnet

We report a theoretical analysis of electron transport through a quantum dot with an embedded biaxial single-molecule magnet, which is coupled to ferromagnetic electrodes of parallel and antiparallel magnet-configurations. For the antiparallel configuration of complete polarization it is shown that the originally prohibited electron transport can be opened up by the macroscopic quantum coherence of the molecular magnet, which provides a spin-flipping mechanism. The charge-current and differential conductance are controllable by variation of the magnitude and orientation of an external magnetic field, which in turn manipulates the macroscopic quantum coherence of the molecular magnet. Moreover, the transport can be switched off at particular values of the magnetic field, where the tunnel splitting is quenched by the quantum phase interference of tunnel paths.The transport current and differential conductance as functions of the electrode-polarization and magnetic field are extensively studied, which may be useful in practical applications. A new transport channel is found in the completely polarized parallel-configuration induced by the tunnel splitting of molecular magnet and resonance-peak splits of the conductance are observed in non-completely polarized configurations. 75.50.Xx Molecular magnets     

Phonon assisted resonant tunneling and its phonons control

We observe a series of sharp resonant features in the tunneling differential conductance of InAs quantum dots. We found that dissipative quantum tunneling has a strong influence on the operation of nanodevices. Because of such tunneling the current–voltage characteristics of tunnel contact created between atomic force microscope tip and a surface of InAs/GaAs quantum dots display many interesting peaks. We found that the number, position, and heights of these peaks are associated with the phonon modes involved. To describe the found effect we use a quasi-classical approximation. There the tunneling current is related to a creation of a dilute instanton–anti-instanton gas. Our experimental data are well described with exactly solvable model where one charged particle is weakly interacting with two promoting phonon modes associated with external medium. We conclude that the characteristics of the tunnel nanoelectronic devices can thus be controlled by a proper choice of phonons existing in materials, which are involved.     

Spin readout and initialization in a semiconductor quantum dot

Electron spin qubits in semiconductors are attractive from the viewpoint of long coherence times. However, single spin measurement is challenging. Several promising schemes incorporate ancillary tunnel couplings that may provide unwanted channels for decoherence. Here, we propose a novel spin-charge transduction scheme, converting spin information to orbital information within a single quantum dot by microwave excitation. The same quantum dot can be used for rapid initialization, gating, and readout. We present detailed modeling of such a device in silicon to confirm its feasibility.     

Charge Reconfiguration in Isolated Quantum Dot Arrays

A high level of tunability and control over arrays of quantum dots are key ingredients toward the goal of scalable‐based qubit architectures. Increasing array size simultaneously increases the parameter space and therefore the tuning complexity. The electron reconfiguration behavior of quantum dot arrays isolated from the electron reservoirs is studied experimentally. Isolating a quantum dot array from the reservoirs does not only enable a high degree of control over the tunnel couplings but at the same time drastically simplifies the stability diagrams for small numbers of electrons trapped in the array. Experimental results on double, triple, and quadruple quantum dot arrays are presented and complementary model calculations allow the identification of all transitions observed in the experiment. Highly tunable long‐range transitions are observed in isolated triple quantum dots and evidence of higher‐order cotunneling is found for the quadruple quantum dot array.     

A quantum sensor for high-performance mass spectrometry

A novel device, called quantum sensor, has been conceived to measure the mass of a single ion with ultimate accuracy and unprecedented sensitivity while the ion is stored and cooled in a trap. The quantum sensor consists of a single calcium ion as sensor, which is laser cooled to mK temperatures and stored in a second trap connected to the trap for the ion under study by a common endcap. The cyclotron motion of the ion under investigation is transformed into axial motion along the magnetic field lines and coupled to the sensor ion by the image current induced in the common endcap. The axial motion of the sensor ion in turn is monitored spatially resolved by its fluorescence light. In this way the detection of phonons can be upgraded to a detection of photons. This device will allow one to overcome recent limitations in high-precision mass spectrometry.