Spin-charge separation in an Aharonov-Bohm interferometer

Abstract

We study manifestations of spin-charge separation (SCS) in transport through a tunnel-coupled interacting single-channel quantum ring. We focus on the high-temperature case (temperature $T$ larger than the level spacing $\Delta$) and discuss both the classical (flux-independent) and interference contributions to the tunneling conductance of the ring in the presence of magnetic flux. We demonstrate that the SCS effects, which arise solely from the electron-electron interaction, lead to the appearance of a peculiar fine structure of the electron spectrum in the ring. Specifically, each level splits into a series of sublevels, with their spacing governed by the interaction strength. In the high-$T$ limit, the envelope of the series contains of the order of $T/\Delta$ sublevels. At the same time, SCS suppresses the tunneling width of the sublevels by a factor of $\Delta/T$. As a consequence, the classical transmission through the ring remains unchanged compared to the noninteracting case: the suppression of tunneling is compensated by the increase of the number of tunneling channels. On the other hand, the flux-dependent contribution to the conductance depends on the interaction-induced dephasing rate which is known to be parametrically increased by SCS in an infinite system. We show, however, that SCS is not effective for dephasing in the limit of weak tunneling. Moreover, generically, in the almost closed ring, the dephasing rate does not depend on the interaction strength and is determined by the tunneling coupling to the leads. In certain special symmetric cases, dephasing is further suppressed. Similar to the spinless case, the high-$T$ conductance shows, as a function of magnetic flux, a sequence of interaction-induced sharp negative peaks on top of the classical contribution.