Thermodynamics Properties of Mesoscopic Quantum Nanowire Devices

We investigate the thermodynamics properties of mesoscopic quantum nanowire devices, such as the effect of electron-phonon relaxation time, Peltier coefficient, carrier concentration, frequency of this field, and channel width. The influence of time-varying fields on the transport through such device has been taken into consideration. This device is modelled as nanowires connecting to two reservoirs. The two-dimensional electron gas in a GaAs- AlGaAs heterojunction has a Fermi wave length which is a hundred times larger than that in a metal. The results show the oscillatory behaviour of dependence of the thermo power on frequency of the induced field. These results agree with the existing experiments and may be important for electronic nanodevices.     

Photon-Assisted Conductance Structure for a Quantum Dot

We investigate theoretically the electron transport of a two-level quantum dot irradiated under a weak laser field at low temperatures in the rotating wave approximation. Using the method of the Keldysh equation of motion for nonequilibrium Green function, we examine the conductance for the system with photon polarization perpendicular to the tunnelling current direction. It is demonstrated that by analytic analysing and numerical examples, a feature of conductance peak splitting appears, and the dependence of conductance on the incident laser frequency and self-energy are discussed.     

Quantum RLC circuits: Charge discreteness and resonance

In a recent article [C.A. Utreras-Díaz, Phys. Lett. A 372 (2008) 5059], we have advanced a semiclassical theory of quantum circuits with discrete charge and electrical resistance. In this work, we present a few elementary applications of this theory. For the zero resistance inductive circuit, we obtain the Stark ladder energies in yet another way; for the circuit driven by a combination d.c. plus a.c. electromotive force (emf) we generalize earlier results by Chandía et al. [K. Chandía, J.C. Flores, E. Lazo, Phys. Lett. A 359 (2006) 693]. As a second application, we investigate the effect of electrical resistance and charge discreteness, in the resonance conditions of a series RLC quantum circuit.     

Current and Shot Noise in a Quantum Dot Coupled to Ferromagnetic Leads in the Kondo Regime

Using the Keldysh nonequilibrium Green function technique, we study the current and shot noise spectroscopy of an interacting quantum dot coupled to two ferromagnetic leads with different polarizations in the Kondo regime. General formulas of current and shot noise are obtained, which can be applied in both the parallel （P） and antiparallel （AP） alignment cases. For large polarization values, it is revealed that the behaviour of differential conductance and shot noise are completely different for spin up and spin down configurations in the P alignment case. However, the differential conductance and shot noise have similar properties for different spin configurations in the P alignment case with the small polarization value and in the AP alignment case with any polarization value.     

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.     

Nonlocal Andreev reflection in a three-terminal Aharonov-Bohm interferometer

We theoretically report a nonlocal Andreev reflection in an Aharonov-Bohm interferometer, which is a three-terminal normal metal/superconductor (NS) mesoscopic hybrid system. It is found that this nonlocal Andreev reflection is sensitive to the systematic parameters, such as the bias voltages, the quantum dot levels, and the external magnetic flux. If we set the chemical potential of one normal metal lead equal to zero, the electronic current in the lead results from two competing processes: the quasiparticle transmission and nonlocal Andreev reflection. The appearance of zero electronic current signals unambiguously the existence of this nonlocal Andreev reflection.     

Effects of Contact Atomic Structure on Electronic Transport in Molecular Junction

Based on nonequilibrium Green＇s function and first-principles calculations, we investigate the change in molecular conductance caused by different adsorption sites with the presence of additional Au atom around the metal- molecule contact in the system that benzene sandwiched between two Au（111） leads. The motivation is the variable situations that may arise in break junction experiments. Numerical results show that the enhancement of conductance induced by the presence of additional Au is dependent on the adsorption sites of anchoring atom. When molecule is located on top site with the presence of additional Au atoms, it can increase molecular conductance remarkably and present negative differential resistance under applied bias which cannot be found in bridge and hollow sites. Furthermore, the effects of different distance between additional Au and sulfur atoms in these three adsorption sites are also discussed.     

Electron transport in carbon nanotube quantum dots in an axial magnetic field

The quantum conductance of the quantum dots (QDs) made of two kinds of primary carbon nanotubes (CNTs), i.e., armchair and zigzag CNTs, threaded by an axial magnetic field, has been studied by using the tight binding approximation and constant interaction model. It is found that under increasing axial magnetic field, each conductance shell of the zigzag CNT-QDs could split into two groups with each group of two peaks moving up or down, respectively. And the up- and down-moving two peaks would re-group with other two peaks, down- and up-moving, in the neighboring shell, forming a new four-peak shell, and then re-splitting, re-grouping again due to the Aharonov-Bohm effect, which is in agreement with those of experiments. But, in contrast, the conductance shells of the armchair CNT-QDs do not split by the magnetic field. Our subsequent theoretical studies show further that the above phenomena, i.e., the conductance shell-splitting, re-grouping, and re-splitting again with increasing the magnetic field exist in all the CNT-QDs except for the armchair one.     

Tunable supercurrent through a double Aharonov–Bohm interferometer

The supercurrent through a double Aharonov–Bohm interferometer formed by parallel-coupled four quantum dots is investigated theoretically. The possibility of controlling the supercurrent of the system is explored by tuning the interdot coupling, dot energy levels, and magnetic flux treading the ring connecting dots and leads. Whether the supercurrent sign can be changed depends not only on the magnetic flux but also on the quantum dot energy levels. By tuning the quantum dot energy levels, the behavior of the supercurrent shows swap effects, which might be used to design a qubit. It is also found that the oscillation period of the supercurrent with respect to the magnetic flux depends on the ratio of the two parts fluxes.     

Contact conductance between graphene and quantum wires

The contact conductance between graphene and two quantum wires which serve as the leads to connect graphene and electron reservoirs is theoretically studied. Our investigation indicates that the contact conductance depends sensitively on the graphene-lead coupling configuration. When each quantum wire couples solely to one carbon atom, the contact conductance vanishes at the Dirac point if the two carbon atoms coupling to the two leads belong to the same sublattice of graphene. We find that such a feature arises from the chirality of the Dirac electron in graphene. Such a chirality associated with conductance zero disappears when a quantum wire couples to multiple carbon atoms. The general result irrelevant to the coupling configuration is that the contact conductance decays rapidly with the increase of the distance between the two leads. In addition, in the weak graphene-lead coupling limit, when the distance between the two leads is much larger than the size of the graphene-lead contact areas and the incident electron energy is close to the Dirac point, the contact conductance is proportional to the square of the product of the two graphene-lead contact areas, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the two leads.     

Time-Dependent Transport in Nanoscale Devices

A method for simulating ballistic time-dependent device transport, which solves the time-dependent Sehrǒdinger equation using the finite difference time domain （FDTD） method together with Poisson＇s equation, is described in detail. The effective mass Schrǒdinger equation is solved. The continuous energy spectrum of the system is discretized using adaptive mesh, resulting in energy levels that sample the density-of-states. By calculating time evolution of wavefunctions at sampled energies, time-dependent transport characteristics such as current and charge density distributions are obtained. Simulation results in a nanowire and a coaxially gated carbon nanotube field-effect transistor （CNTFET） are presented. Transient effects, e.g., finite rising time, are investigated in these devices.     

Discrete-charge quantum circuits and electrical resistance

From the theory of quantum LC circuits with discrete charge, and semiclassical considerations, we obtain approximate energy eigenvalues, depending on the parameter . Next, we include electrical resistance for the quantum RLC circuit, obtaining a relation that strongly reminds us of the Landauer formula.     

Transport Properties of Binary Clusters

We present first-principles studies on the transport properties of small sificon and aluminium clusters： Al2, Si2, Al4 and AlSi sandwiched between two Al （100） electrodes. The variation of the equilibrium conductance as a function of contact distance for these two-probe systems is probed. Our results show that the transport properties are dependent on both the specific nanostructure and the separation distance between the central molecule and the electrodes. For equilibrium transport properties, the clusters with the similar structure show similar transmission spectra at large distances, the small difference can be explained by the electron filling. For current-voltage characteristics, all the clusters show the metallic behaviour at lower bias, however very different non-linear behaviour can be observed at higher bias. For AlSi and Al2, when the distance between the central cluster and the electrodes is 3.5 A, large negative differential resistance （NDR） can be found in the bias range 0.8V～1.4V.     

Electron transport in a double quantum ring: Evidence of an AND gate

We explore AND gate response in a double quantum ring where each ring is threaded by a magnetic flux ?. The double quantum ring is attached symmetrically to two semi-infinite one-dimensional metallic electrodes and two gate voltages, namely, Va and Vb, are applied, respectively, in the lower arms of the two rings which are treated as two inputs of the AND gate. The system is described in the tight-binding framework and the calculations are done using the Green's function formalism. Here we numerically compute the conductance-energy and current-voltage characteristics as functions of the ring-to-electrode coupling strengths, magnetic flux and gate voltages. Our study suggests that, for a typical value of the magnetic flux ?=?₀/2 (?₀=ch/e, the elementary flux-quantum) a high output current (1) (in the logical sense) appears only if both the two inputs to the gate are high (1), while if neither or only one input to the gate is high (1), a low output current (0) results. It clearly demonstrates the AND gate behavior and this aspect may be utilized in designing an electronic logic gate.     

Photon-Assisted Electron Transport for a λ-shaped Carbon Nanotube Junction

We theoretically study the electron transport properties for two coupled single-walled caxbon nanotube quantum dots connected to metallic electrodes under the irradiation of an external electromagnetic field at low tempera- tures. Using the standaxd nonequilibrium Green＇s function techniques, we examine the time-averaged transmission coefficient and linear conductance. It is shown that by some numerical examples, the photon-assisted inter-dot coupling causes Fano resonance and the conductance of the system is sensitive to the external field parameters. The transport dependence on the external field parameters may be used to detect the high-frequency microwave irradiation.     

Equilibrium spin current induced by spin-orbital interaction in a quantum dot system

We report a theoretical study of the equilibrium spin current flowing in a quantum dot system. Two electrodes are the two-dimensional electron gas with Rashba or Dresselhaus spin-orbital interaction. By using the Keldysh Green's function technique, we demonstrated that a nonzero spin current can flow in the system without bias. At the weak coupling between electrodes and the quantum dot, the spin current is approximately proportional to the cross product of two average pseudo-magnetizations in two electrodes, which agrees with the result of the linear response theory; whereas at the opposite case, the strong coupling between the quantum dot and electrodes can lead to a non-sinusoidal behavior of the equilibrium spin current. These behaviors of the equilibrium spin current are similar to the Josephson current.     

Giant magnetoresistance effect in hybrid ferromagnetic-Schottky-metal and semiconductor nanosystem

We report on a theoretical investigation of the giant magnetoresistance (GMR) effect in hybrid ferromagnetic-Schottky-metal and semiconductor nanosystem. Experimentally, this GMR device can be realized by the deposition of two ferromagnetic (FM) stripes and one Schottky normal metal (NM) in parallel way on the top of a semiconductor GaAs heterostructure. The GMR effect emanates from the significant transmission difference for electrons tunneling through parallel and antiparallel magnetization configurations of the device, and its magnetoresistance ratio (MR) can reach the order of ¹⁰⁶%. Furthermore, it is also shown that the MR of the device depends strongly on the relative location of the Schottky NM stripe between two FM stripes.     

Shot Noise in a Mesoscopic Interferometer

The charge conductance and the shot noise in an Aharonov--Bohm interferometer with double quantum dots embedded and coupled to each other by a capacity are studied in the framework of the equation of motion of Green’s function. From the impurity Anderson model Hamiltonian, the equations of motion of nonequilibrium Green functions are derived and solved including the effects of two body correlations under Lacroix’s approximation. Our results show that the conductance, the shot noise, and the Fano factor (the ratio of the shot noise to the Poisson noise) as functions of the magnetic flux oscillate with the period of h/e, and their oscillation behaviour is similar to the results of the experiment replacing the capacitive coupling by tunnelling between the two dots. The experiment is suggested to test the results.     

dc Josephson effect in metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes

The dc Josephson effect is investigated in a single-walled metallic carbon nanotube connected to two superconducting leads. In particular, by using the Luttinger liquid theory, we analyze the effects of the electron-electron interaction on the supercurrent. We find that in the long junction limit the strong electronic correlations of the nanotube, together with its peculiar band structure, induce oscillations in the critical current as a function of the junction length and/or the nanotube electron filling. These oscillations represent a signature of the Luttinger liquid physics of the nanotube, for they are absent if the interaction is vanishing. We show that this effect can be exploited to reverse the sign of the supercurrent, realizing a tunable π-junction.     

Simulation of Inelastic Electron Tunnelling Spectroscopy on Different Contact Structures in 4,4＇-Biphenyldithiol Molecular Junctions

A first-principles computational method is developed to study the inelastic electron tunnelling spectroscopy （IETS） of 4,4＇-biphenyldithiol molecular junction with three different contact structures between the molecule and electrodes in the nonresonant regime. The obtained distinct IETS can be used to resolve the geometrical structure of the molecular junction. The computational results demonstrate that the IETS has certain selection rule for vibrational modes, where the longitudinal modes with the same direction as the tunnelling current have greatest contribution to the IETS. The thermal effect on the IETS is also displayed.