Spin-orbit coupling and resonances in the conductance of quantum wires

Abstract

We investigate a possibility of pair electron-electron ($e\ensuremath{-}e$) collisions in a ballistic wire with spin-orbit coupling and only one populated mode. Unlike in a spin-degenerate system, a combination of spin splitting in momentum space with a momentum-dependent spin precession opens up a finite phase space for pair $e\ensuremath{-}e$ collisions around three distinct positions of the wire's chemical potential. For a short wire, we calculate the corresponding resonant contributions to the conductance, which have different power-law temperature dependencies, and, in some cases, vanish if the wire's transverse confinement potential is symmetric. Our results may explain the recently observed feature at the lower conductance plateau in InAs wires.