Photon-assisted shot noise due to the charging effect in a quantum dot device

We have investigated the spectral density of shot noise for an ultra-small quantum dot(QD) system in the Coulomb blockade regime when irradiated with microwave fields (MWFs) by employing a nonequilibrium Green’s function technique. The shot noise is sensitive to Coulomb interaction, and the photon-assisted Coulomb blockade behaviour strongly modifies the mesoscopic transport. We have calculated the first and second derivatives of shot noise in the strong and weak coupling regimes to compare the theoretical results with existing experimental results. In the strong coupling regime, the first and second derivatives of shot noise display Fano type peak-valley structures around the charging channel 2E _c due to Coulomb interaction. When the magnitudes of the MWFs are sufficiently large, the system displays channel blockade due to photon irradiation. The photon-assisted and Coulomb blockade steps in the noise — as well as the resonant behaviour in the differential noise — are smeared by increasing temperature. The Coulomb interaction suppresses the shot noise, but the ac fields can either suppress the shot noise(balanced case) or enhance the shot noise(unbalanced case). The suppression of shot noise caused by ac fields in the balanced case is greater than that caused by Coulomb interaction in our system. Super-Poissonian shot noise may be induced due to the compound effects of strong Coulomb interaction and photon absorption-emission processes.     

Single-electron tunneling in silicon nanostructures

We present a brief overview on different realizations of single-electron devices fabricated in silicon-on-insulator films. Lateral structuring of highly doped silicon films allows us to observe quasi-metallic Coulomb blockade oscillations in shrunken wires where no quantum dot structure is geometrically defined. Embedding quantum dot structures into the inversion channel of a silicon-on-insulator field-effect transistor Coulomb blockade up to 300 K is observed. In contrast to the quasi-metallic structures, in these devices the influence of the quantum mechanical level spacing inside the dot becomes visible. Suspending highly doped silicon nanostructures leads to a novel kind of Coulomb blockade devices allowing both high-power application as well as the study of electron–phonon interaction. Received: 14 April 2000 / Accepted: 17 April 2000 / Published online: 6 September 2000     

Mesoscopic fluctuations of tunneling and cotunneling in quantum dots

Recent measurements of mesoscopic tunneling and cotunneling fluctuations in Coulomb blockaded ballistic quantum dots are presented. The statistics and parametric fluctuations (as a function of magnetic field) of Coulomb blockade peak heights are found to be consistent with random-matrix-theory predictions. Mesoscopic fluctuations of elastic cotunneling, measured in the valleys between blockade peaks, are also presented along with a semiclassical explanation of the observed enhancement of the magnetic field scale of cotunneling fluctuations compared to resonant tunneling fluctuations.     

Correlations of conductance peaks and transmission phases in deformed quantum dots

We investigate the Coulomb blockade resonances and the phase of the transmission amplitude of a deformed ballistic quantum dot weakly coupled to leads. We show that preferred single-particle levels exist which stay close to the Fermi energy for a wide range of values of the gate voltage. These states give rise to sequences of Coulomb blockade resonances with correlated peak heights and transmission phases. The correlation of the peak heights becomes stronger with increasing temperature. The phase of the transmission amplitude shows lapses by between the resonances. Implications for recent experiments on ballistic quantum dots are discussed. Received 17 July 1998     

石墨烯纳米带量子点中的量子混沌现象

在20 mK的极低温下测量了石墨烯纳米带量子点的电子输运性质,观测到清晰的库仑阻塞菱形块和对应量子点激发态的电导峰.对库仑阻塞近邻电导峰间距和峰值进行了统计分析,发现其统计分布分别满足无规矩阵理论描述的Wigner-Dyson分布和Porter-Thomas分布,说明石墨烯纳米带量子点在低温下出现了量子混沌现象.还讨论了这种长方形量子点中量子混沌的可能成因. 关键词： 石墨烯纳米带 量子点 库仑阻塞 量子混沌     

Entropic Corrections to Coulomb’s Law

Two well-known quantum corrections to the area law have been introduced in the literatures, namely, logarithmic and power-law corrections. Logarithmic corrections, arises from loop quantum gravity due to thermal equilibrium fluctuations and quantum fluctuations, while, power-law correction appears in dealing with the entanglement of quantum fields in and out the horizon. Inspired by Verlinde’s argument on the entropic force, and assuming the quantum corrected relation for the entropy, we propose the entropic origin for the Coulomb’s law in this note. Also we investigate the Uehling potential as a radiative correction to Coulomb potential in 1-loop order and show that for some value of distance the entropic corrections of the Coulomb’s law is compatible with the vacuum-polarization correction in QED. So, we derive modified Coulomb’s law as well as the entropy corrected Poisson’s equation which governing the evolution of the scalar potential ϕ. Our study further supports the unification of gravity and electromagnetic interactions based on the holographic principle.     

Thermoelectric properties of correlated double quantum dot system in Coulomb blockade regime

We theoretically study thermoelectric properties of a coupled double quantum dot (DQD) system coupled to normal leads using two impurity Anderson model with intra- as well as interdot Coulomb interactions. A generic formulation, which was earlier developed to study electronic properties (zero bias maximum of differential conductance and interesting partial swapping in Fano phenomena) of DQD system within Coulomb blockade regime for a non-magnetic case, is extended to investigate thermoelectric properties i.e. electrical conductance, thermoelectric power and thermal conductance of the same system, as a function of temperature by varying interdot Coulomb interaction and interdot tunneling. Interdot Coulomb interaction is found to trigger some novel features like crossover in thermoelectric power with temperature in all the configurations (series, parallel and T-shape) and a small peak in thermal conductance toward low temperatures, T≈Γ/10, in series and T-shape configurations, which is found to be missing in case of symmetric parallel configuration. The origin of these novel features is attributed to the interplay of renormalization of energy levels caused by the interdot Coulomb interaction which is interpreted in terms of local density of states and the asymmetry effects related to dot-lead couplings/interference effects.     

Dynamic localization and the Coulomb blockade in quantum dots under ac pumping

We study conductance through a quantum dot under Coulomb blockade conditions in the presence of an external periodic perturbation. The stationary state is determined by the balance between the heating of the dot electrons by the perturbation and cooling by electron exchange with the cold contacts. We show that the Coulomb blockade peak can have a peculiar shape if heating is affected by dynamic localization, which can be an experimental signature of this effect.     

Numerical studies of electron transfers in two-dimensional multiple quantum dots

Quantum dynamical properties of electron transfers through multiple quantum dots (QDs) are numerically investigated. The QDs are modeled as two-dimensional electron systems and the conductive properties are calculated from the time evolution of the electron wavefunctions. In addition, we propose a new technique dealing with the electron-electron correlation and demonstrate the dynamical simulations of the Coulomb blockade as well as the spin blockade.     

Mesoscopic Josephson effect

In the classical Josephson effect the phase difference across the junction is well defined, and the supercurrent is reduced only weakly by phase diffusion. For mesoscopic junctions with small capacitance the phase undergoes large quantum fluctuations, and the current is also decreased by Coulomb blockade effects. We discuss the behavior of the current–voltage characteristics in a large range of parameters comprising the phase diffusion regime with coherent Josephson current as well as the supercurrent peak due to incoherent Cooper pair tunneling in the Coulomb blockade regime.     

Signatures of spin pairing in chaotic quantum dots

Coulomb blockade resonances are measured in a GaAs quantum dot in which both shape deformations and interactions are small. The parametric evolution of the Coulomb blockade peaks shows a pronounced pair correlation in both position and amplitude, which is interpreted as spin pairing. As a consequence, the nearest-neighbor distribution of peak spacings can be well approximated by a modified bimodal Wigner surmise, in which interactions are taken into account beyond the constant interaction model.     

Single-electron tunneling and Coulomb blockade in carbon-based quantum dots

Single-electron tunneling (SET) and Coulomb blockade (CB) phenomena have been widely observed in nanoscaled electronics and have received intense attention around the world. In the past few years, we have studied SET in carbon nanotube fragments and fullerenes by applying the so-called “Orthodox” theory [28]. As outlined in this review article, we investigated the single-electron charging and discharging process via current-voltage characteristics, gate effect, and electronic structure-related factors. Because the investigated geometric structures are three-dimensionally confined, resulting in a discrete spectrum of energy levels resembling the property of quantum dots, we evidenced the CB and Coulomb staircases in these structures. These nanostructures are sufficiently small that introducing even a single electron is sufficient to dramatically change the transport properties as a result of the charging energy associated with this extra electron. We found that the Coulomb staircases occur in the I–V characteristics only when the width of the left barrier junction is smaller than that of the right barrier junction. In this case, the transmission coefficient of the emitter junction is larger than that of the collector junction; also, occupied levels enter the bias window, thereby enhancing the tunneling extensively.      

Absence of Debye screening in the quantum Coulomb system

We present an approximation to the quantum Coulomb plasma at equilibrium which captures the power-law violations of Debye screening which have been reported in recent papers. The objectives are (1) to produce a simpler model which we will study in forthcoming papers, and (2) to develop a strategy by which the absence of screening can be proven for the low-density quantum Coulomb plasma itself.     

Longitudinal conductivity of Ge/Si heterostructures with quantum dots

The conductance along an island layer of Ge quantum dots buried in silicon was investigated. The sizes of the islands varied in the range D ≈ 12−19 nm. It was found that the charge transport is characterized by two activation energies. The first one is associated with the thermal emission of holes from Ge quantum wells into the valence band of Si. The second one is due to the tunneling of holes between islands under Coulomb blockade conditions and is determined by the electrostatic charging energy of a quantum dot. Pis’ma Zh. éksp. Teor. Fiz. 63, No. 6, 423–426 (25 March 1996)     

Spacing and width of Coulomb blockade peaks in a silicon quantum dot

We present an experimental study of the fluctuations of Coulomb blockade peak positions of a quantum dot. The dot is defined by patterning the two-dimensional electron gas of a silicon MOSFET structure using stacked gates. The ratio of charging energy to single-particle energy is considerably larger than in comparable GaAs/AlGaAs quantum dots. The statistical distribution of the conductance peak spacings in the Coulomb blockade regime was found to be unimodal and does not follow the Wigner surmise. The fluctuations of the spacings are much larger than the typical single-particle level spacing and thus clearly contradict the expectation of random matrix theory. Measurements of the natural line width of a set of several adjacent conductance peaks suggest that all of the peaks in the set are dominated by electrons being transported through a single-broad energy level.     

Coulomb blockade in an open quantum dot

We report the observation of Coulomb blockade in a quantum dot contacted by two quantum point contacts each with a single fully transmitting mode, a system thought to be well described without invoking Coulomb interactions. Below 50 mK we observe a periodic oscillation in the conductance of the dot with gate voltage, corresponding to a residual quantization of charge. From the temperature and magnetic field dependence, we infer the oscillations are mesoscopic Coulomb blockade, a type of Coulomb blockade caused by electron interference in an otherwise open system.     

Single-electron transport in electrically tunable nanomagnets

We study a single-electron transistor (SET) based upon a II-VI semiconductor quantum dot doped with a single-Mn ion. We present evidence that this system behaves like a quantum nanomagnet whose total spin and magnetic anisotropy depend dramatically both on the number of carriers and their orbital nature. Thereby, the magnetic properties of the nanomagnet can be controlled electrically. Conversely, the electrical properties of this SET depend on the quantum state of the Mn spin, giving rise to spin-dependent charging energies and hysteresis in the Coulomb blockade oscillations of the linear conductance.     

Blockade of tunneling in a suspended single-electron transistor

The tunneling of electrons that is limited by the Coulomb blockade effect in a single-electron transistor with a quantum dot based on a narrow GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wire suspended over a substrate is investigated. By means of a direct comparison experiment, the tunneling features associated with the separation of the quantum dot from the substrate are revealed. In addition to an increase in the charge energy (Coulomb gap), which reaches 170 K in temperature units, the dependence of this energy on the number of electrons in the quantum dot, which varies from zero to four, is observed. This dependence is explained by a change in the effective size of the dot due to the effect of the depleting gate voltage. Moreover, the additional blockade of tunneling that is different from the Coulomb blockade and is specific for suspended structures is observed. It is shown that this blockade is not associated with the dynamical effect of exciting local phonon modes and can be attributed to the change in the static elastic strains in the quantum wire that accompany the tunneling of an electron to/from the quantum dot.     

Distortions of the coulomb blockade conductance line in scanning gate measurements of inas nanowire based quantum dots

We performed measurements at helium temperatures of the electronic transport in the linear regime in an InAs quantum wire in the presence of a charged tip of an atomic force microscope (AFM) at low electron concentration. We show that at certain concentration of electrons, only two closely placed quantum dots, both in the Coulomb blockade regime, govern conductance of the whole wire. Under this condition, two types of peculiarities—wobbling and splitting—arise in the behavior of the lines of the conductance peaks of Coulomb blockade. These peculiarities are measured in quantum-wire-based structures for the first time. We explain both peculiarities as an interplay of the conductance of two quantum dots present in the wire. Detailed modeling of wobbling behavior made in the framework of the orthodox theory of Coulomb blockade demonstrates good agreement with the obtained experimental data.     

Experimental test of the dynamical coulomb blockade theory for short coherent conductors

We observed the recently predicted quantum suppression of dynamical Coulomb blockade on short coherent conductors by measuring the conductance of a quantum point contact embedded in a tunable on-chip circuit. Taking advantage of the circuit modularity we measured most parameters used by the theory. This allowed us to perform a reliable and quantitative experimental test of the theory. Dynamical Coulomb blockade corrections, probed up to the second conductance plateau of the quantum point contact, are found to be accurately normalized by the same Fano factor as quantum shot noise, in excellent agreement with the theoretical predictions.