The electron transport characters in a nanostructure with the periodic magnetic-electric barriers

This paper detailedly studies the transmission probability, the spin polarization and the conductance of the ballistic electron in a nanostrueture with the periodic magnetic-electric barriers These observable quantities are found to be strongly dependent not only on the magnetic configuration, the incident electron energy and the incident wave vector, but also on the number of the periodic magnetic-electric barriers The transmission coefficient and the spin polarization show a periodic pattern with the increase of the separation between two adjacent magnetic fields, and the resonance splitting increases as the number of periods increases. Surprisingly, it is found that a polarization can be achieved by spin-dependent resonant tunnelling in this structure, although the average magnetic field of the structure is zero.     

The electron transport characters in a nanostructure with the periodic magnetic-electric barriers

This paper detailedly studies the transmission probability, the spin polarization and the conductance of the ballistic electron in a nanostructure with the periodic magnetic-electric barriers. These observable quantities are found to be strongly dependent not only on the magnetic configuration, the incident electron energy and the incident wave vector, but also on the number of the periodic magnetic-electric barriers. The transmission coefficient and the spin polarization show a periodic pattern with the increase of the separation between two adjacent magnetic fields, and the resonance splitting increases as the number of periods increases. Surprisingly, it is found that a polarization can be achieved by spin-dependent resonant tunnelling in this structure, although the average magnetic field of the structure is zero.     

Spin-valley-dependent transport and giant tunneling magnetoresistance in silicene with periodic electromagnetic modulations

The transport property of electrons tunneling through arrays of magnetic and electric barriers is studied in silicene.In the tunneling transmission spectrum, the spin-valley-dependent filtered states can be achieved in an incident energy range which can be controlled by the electric gate voltage. For the parallel magnetization configuration, the transmission is asymmetric with respect to the incident angle θ, and electrons with a very large negative incident angle can always transmit in propagating modes for one of the spin-valley filtered states under a certain electromagnetic condition. But for the antiparallel configuration, the transmission is symmetric about θ and there is no such transmission channel. The difference of the transmission between the two configurations leads to a giant tunneling magnetoresistance(TMR) effect.The TMR can reach to 100% in a certain Fermi energy interval around the electrostatic potential. This energy interval can be adjusted significantly by the magnetic field and/or electric gate voltage. The results obtained may be useful for future valleytronic and spintronic applications, as well as magnetoresistance device based on silicene.     

Spin-dependent thermoelectric effect and spin battery mechanism in triple quantum dots with Rashba spin-orbital interaction

We have studied spin-dependent thermoelectric transport through parallel triple quantum dots with Rashba spinorbital interaction(RSOI) embedded in an Aharonov-Bohm interferometer connected symmetrically to leads using nonequilibrium Green's function method in the linear response regime.Under the appropriate configuration of magnetic flux phase and RSOI phase,the spin figure of merit can be enhanced and is even larger than the charge figure of merit.In particular,the charge and spin thermopowers as functions of both the magnetic flux phase and the RSOI phase present quadruple-peak structures in the contour graphs.For some specific configuration of the two phases,the device can provide a mechanism that converts heat into a spin voltage when the charge thermopower vanishes while the spin thermopower is not zero,which is useful in realizing the thermal spin battery and inducing a pure spin current in the device.     

Shot noise in magnetic field modulated graphene superlattice

We investigate the shot noise properties in a monolayer graphene superlattice modulated by N parallel ferromagnets deposited on a dielectric layer. It is found that for the antiparallel magnetization configuration or when magnetic field is zero the new Dirac-like point appears in graphene superlattice. The transport is almost forbidden at this new Dirac-like point, and the Fano factor reaches its maximum value 1/3. In the parallel magnetization configuration as the number of magnetic barriers increases, the shot noise increases. In this case, the transmission can be blocked by the magnetic–electric barrier and the Fano factor approaches 1, which is dramatically distinguishable from that in antiparallel alignment. The results may be helpful to control the electron transport in graphene-based electronic devices.     

Magnetotransport in a graphene monolayer with two tunable magnetic barriers

The magnetotransport property for a monolayer graphene with two turnable magnetic barriers has been investigated by the transfer-matrix method. We show that the parameters of barrier height, width, and interval between two barriers affect the electron wave decaying length, which determine the conductance with parallel or antiparallel magnetization configuration, and consequently the tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) for the system. Interestingly, a graphene attached by two barriers with different heights can produce a resonant TMR peak at low energy region one order of magnitude larger than that for the system with two same height barriers because that the asymmetry of magnetic barriers block the electron transmission in the case of antiparallel magnetization configuration. The results obtained here may be useful in understanding of electron tunneling in graphene and in designing of graphene-based nanodevices.     

Transport in magnetic graphene superlattice with Rashba spin-orbit interaction

Based on the transfer-matrix method, we have investigated the spin-dependent transport properties of magnetic graphene superlattice in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit interaction (RSOI). It is shown that the angular range of the spin transmission probability through magnetic graphene superlattice can be efficiently controlled by the number of barriers. As the number of magnetic barriers increases, the angular range of the transmission through the magnetic superlattice decreases, the gaps in the transmission and conductivity versus energy become wider. It is also found that the spin conductivities oscillate with the Fermi energy and RSOI strength. Specifically, when a magnetic field is present, the spin polarisation can be observed, whereas for the RSOI alone it is zero. Application of such a phenomenon to design a spin polarised electron device based on the graphene material is anticipated.     

Thermoelectric efficiency enhanced in a quantum dot with polarization leads,spin-flip and external magnetic field

We theoretically study the thermoelectric transport properties in a quantum dot system with two ferromagnetic leads, the spin-flip scattering and the external magnetic field. The results show that the spin polarization of the leads strongly influences thermoelectric coefficients of the device. For the parallel configuration the peak of figure of merit increases with the increase of polarization strength and non-collinear configuration trends to destroy the improvement of figure of merit induced by lead polarization. While the modulation of the spin-flip scattering on the figure of merit is effective only in the absence of external magnetic field or small magnetic field. In terms of improving the thermoelectric efficiency, the external magnetic field plays a more important role than spin-flip scattering. The thermoelectric efficiency can be significantly enhanced by the magnetic field for a given spin-flip scattering strength.     

Probing the effective nuclear-spin magnetic field in a single quantum dot via full counting statistics

We study theoretically the full counting statistics of electron transport through a quantum dot weakly coupled to two ferromagnetic leads, in which an effective nuclear-spin magnetic field originating from the configuration of nuclear spins is considered. We demonstrate that the quantum coherence between the two singly-occupied eigenstates and the spin polarization of two ferromagnetic leads play an important role in the formation of super-Poissonian noise. In particular, the orientation and magnitude of the effective field have a significant influence on the variations of the values of high-order cumulants, and the variations of the skewness and kurtosis values are more sensitive to the orientation and magnitude of the effective field than the shot noise. Thus, the high-order cumulants of transport current can be used to qualitatively extract information on the orientation and magnitude of the effective nuclear-spin magnetic field in a single quantum dot.     

Effects of a longitudinal magnetic field on spin injection and detection in InAs/GaAs quantum dot structures

Effects of a longitudinal magnetic field on optical spin injection and detection in InAs/GaAs quantum dot (QD) structures are investigated by optical orientation spectroscopy. An increase in the optical and spin polarization of the QDs is observed with increasing magnetic field in the range 0-2?T, and is attributed to suppression of exciton spin depolarization within the QDs that is promoted by the hyperfine interaction and anisotropic electron-hole exchange interaction. This leads to a corresponding enhancement in spin detection efficiency of the QDs by a factor of up to 2.5. At higher magnetic fields, when these spin depolarization processes are quenched, the electron spin polarization in anisotropic QD structures (such as double QDs that are preferably aligned along a specific crystallographic axis) still exhibits a rather strong field dependence under non-resonant excitation. In contrast, such a field dependence is practically absent in more 'isotropic' QD structures (e.g.?single QDs). We attribute the observed effect to stronger electron spin relaxation in the spin injectors (i.e.?wetting layer and GaAs barriers) of the lower-symmetry QD structures, which also explains the lower spin injection efficiency observed in these structures.     

Magnetoresistance effect in a hybrid ferromagnetic/semiconductor nanostructure

We propose a Magnetoresistance device in a magnetically modulated two-dimensional electron gas, which can be realized experimentally by the deposition of two parallel ferromagnetic strips on the top and bottom of a semiconductor heterostructure. It is shown that there exists a significant transmission difference for electrons through the parallel and antiparallel magnetization configurations of such a device, which leads to a considerable magnetoresistance effect. It is also shown that the magnetoresistance ratio of the device depends greatly on the magnetic strength difference in the two delta barriers of the system.     

Temperature dependence of magnetocurrent in spin-valve transistor: a phenomenological study

The temperature dependence of magnetocurrent in the spin-valve transistor has been theoretically explored based on phenomenological model. We find that temperature dependence of the collector current strongly depends on the relative orientation of magnetic moment of ferromagnetic metals due to spin mixing effect. For example, the parallel collector current is decreasing with increasing temperatures, while the anti-parallel collector current is increasing. We then obtain decreasing magnetocurrent with increasing temperatures. The result accords with the experimental data in qualitative manner. Along with this, we find that temperature dependence of hot electron spin polarization can also contribute to the magnetocurrent at finite temperatures. This phenomenological model calculations suggest that it is essential to understand the relative importance of spin mixing effect and hot electron spin polarization in the spin-valve transistor at finite temperatures.     

Large Magnetoresistance Based on Double Spin Filter Tunnel Barriers

We propose and theoretically analyse a double magnetic tunnel device that takes advantages of the spin filter effect. Two magnetic tunnel barriers are formed by different spin filters which have different barrier heights. The magnetoresistance of the device is low （high） when the magnetic moments of the two spin filters are parallel （antiparallel）. We present a theoretical calculation of the magnetoresistance based on electric tunnel effect. In addition, the effect of the difference barrier heights and exchange splitting energies between the two spin filters are also analysed in detail. The numerical results show that the spin filter in this configuration gives a magnetoresistance larger than that with standard magnetic tunnel junctions.     

Kondo effect in quantum dots coupled to ferromagnetic leads

We study the Kondo effect in a quantum dot coupled to ferromagnetic leads and analyze its properties as a function of the spin polarization of the leads. Based on a scaling approach, we predict that for parallel alignment of the magnetizations in the leads the strong-coupling limit of the Kondo effect is reached at a finite value of the magnetic field. Using an equation of motion technique, we study nonlinear transport through the dot. For parallel alignment, the zero-bias anomaly may be split even in the absence of an external magnetic field. For antiparallel spin alignment and symmetric coupling, the peak is split only in the presence of a magnetic field, but shows a characteristic asymmetry in amplitude and position.     

Spin-dependent thermoelectric transport through double quantum dots

We study the thermoelectric transport through a double-quantum-dot system with spin-dependent interdot coupling and ferromagnetic electrodes by means of the non-equilibrium Green’s function in the linear response regime.It is found that the thermoelectric coefficients are strongly dependent on the splitting of the interdot coupling,the relative magnetic configurations,and the spin polarization of leads.In particular,the thermoelectric efficiency can reach a considerable value in the parallel configuration when the effective interdot coupling and the tunnel coupling between the quantum dots and the leads for the spin-down electrons are small.Moreover,the thermoelectric efficiency increases with the intradot Coulomb interaction increasing and can reach very high values at appropriate temperatures.In the presence of the magnetic field,the spin accumulation in the leads strongly suppresses the thermoelectric efficiency,and a pure spin thermopower can be obtained.     

The effect of periodic magnetic-electric barriers on electron transport in a nanostructure

Using the transfer matrix method, the transmission probability, the spin polarization and the electron conductance of a ballistic electron are studied in detail in a nanostructure. We observe that these quantities sensitively depend on the number of periodic magnetic-electric barriers. As the number of periods increases, the resonance splitting increases, the number of the resonance peaks increases and the peaks become sharper as well as the spin polarization being enhanced. Surprisingly, a polarization of nearly 100% can be achieved by spin-dependent resonant tunneling in this structure, although the average magnetic field of the structure is zero.     

Spin-Polarized Transport Through a Quantum Dot Coupled to Ferromagnetic Leads:Kondo Correlation Effect

We investigate the linear and nonlinear transport through a single level quantum dot connected to two ferromagnetic leads in Kondo regime, using the slave-boson mean-field approach for finite on-site Coulomb repulsion. We find that for antiparallel alignment of the spin orientations in the leads, a single zero-bias Kondo peak always appears in the voltage-dependent differential conductance with peak height going down to zero as the polarization grows to P=1. For parallel configuration, with increasing polarization from zero, the Kondo peak descends and greatly widens with the appearance of shoulders, and finally splits into two peaks on both sides of the bias voltage around P～0.7 until disappearing at even larger polarization strength. At any spin orientation angle θ, the linear conductance generally drops with growing polarization strength. For a given finite polarization, the minimum linear conductance always appears at θ=π.     

Properties of specific electron helical states leads to spin filtering effect in dsDNA molecules

In a recent paper, Gohler et al. [1] report that a high efficiency electron spin filter can be constructed from an adsorbed monolayer of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA). Understanding the mechanisms responsible for spin filtering under these conditions has proven to be a challenge, as classical analysis fails to account for the high degree of polarization observed. In this paper we show that these observations can be understood since conduction electrons in the DNA molecule are characterized by specific helical states having a magnetic moment opposite to the direction of the electron wavevector. These helical states are fundamental to the quantum-mechanical properties of periodic structures with helical symmetry. Free electrons passing through the DNA monolayer interact with these helical states, but the strength of this interaction depends on the relative orientation of the electron spin and the magnetic moment associated with the possible helical states. One of these configurations leads to a negligible interaction resulting in high spin polarization in the transmitted electron beam. The overall effect is that the free electron flux component with a magnetic moment in an opposite direction to the magnetic moment of the helical states can pass through the dsDNA monolayer without absorption, while the other spin component is highly absorbed by dsDNA. This is consistent with the finding that a monolayer of single-stranded DNA does not exhibit similar spin filtering properties.     

Electronic spin precession and interferometry from spin-orbital entanglement in a double quantum dot

A double quantum dot inserted in parallel between two metallic leads can entangle the electron spin with the orbital (dot index) degree of freedom. An Aharonov-Bohm orbital phase can be transferred to the spinor wave function, providing a geometrical control of the spin precession around a fixed magnetic field. A fully coherent behavior occurs in a mixed orbital-spin Kondo regime. Evidence for the spin precession can be obtained, either using spin-polarized metallic leads or by placing the double dot in one branch of a metallic loop.     

Entanglement in a three spin system controlled by electric and magnetic fields

We study the effect of electric field and magnetic flux on spin entanglement in an artificial triangular molecule built of coherently coupled quantum dots. In a subspace of doublet states an explicit relation of concurrence with spin correlation functions and chirality is presented. The electric field modifies superexchange correlations and shifts many-electron levels (the Stark effect), as well as changing spin correlations. For some specific orientation of the electric field one can observe monogamy, for which one of the spins is separated from two others. Moreover, the Stark effect manifests itself in a different spin entanglement for small and strong electric fields. The role of magnetic flux is opposite: it leads to circulation of spin supercurrents and spin delocalization.