Mesoscopic Transport Research Articles

Mesoscopic transport revisited

Having driven a large part of the decade’s progress in physics, nanoelectronics is nowpassing from today’s realm of the extraordinary to tomorrow’s commonplace. This carriesthe problem of turning proofs of concept into practical artefacts. Better and more sharplyfocused predictive modelling will be the ultimate guide to optimizing mesoscopictechnology as it matures. Securing this level of understanding needs a reassessment of theassumptions at the base of the present state of the field. We offer a brief overview of theunderlying assumptions of mesoscopic transport.

Partial-wave microscopic spectroscopy detects subwavelength refractive index fluctuations: an application to cancer diagnosis

Existing optical imaging techniques offer us powerful tools to directly visualize the cellular structure at the microscale; however, their capability of nanoscale sensitivity is restricted by the diffraction-limited resolution. We show that the mesoscopic light transport theory analysis of the spectra of partial waves propagating within a weakly disordered medium, such as biological cells [i.e., partial wave spectroscopy (PWS)] quantifies refractive index fluctuations at subdiffractional length scales. We validate this nanoscale sensitivity of PWS using experiments with nanostructured models. We also demonstrate the potential of this technique to detect nanoscale alterations in cells from patients with pancreatic cancer who are otherwise classified as normal by conventional microscopic histopathology.

Mesoscopic mass transport effects in electrocatalytic processes

The role of mesoscopic mass transport and re-adsorption effects in electrocatalytic reactions was investigated using the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) as an example. The electrochemical measurements were performed on structurally well-defined nanostructured model electrodes under controlled transport conditions in a thin-layer flow cell. The electrodes consist of arrays of Pt ultra-microelectrodes (nanodisks) of defined size (diameter approximately 100 nm) separated on a planar glassy carbon (GC) substrate, which were fabricated employing hole-mask colloidal lithography (HCL). The measurements reveal a distinct variation in the ORR selectivity with Pt nanodisk density and with increasing electrolyte flow, showing a pronounced increase of the H2O2 yield, by up to 65%, when increasing the flow rate from 1 to 30 microL s(-1). These results are compared with previous findings and discussed in terms of a reaction model proposed recently (A. Schneider et al., Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2008, 10, 1931), which includes (i) direct reduction to H2O on the Pt surface and (ii) additional H2O2 formation and desorption on both Pt and carbon surfaces and subsequent partial re-adsorption and further reduction of the H2O2 molecules on the Pt surface. The potential of model studies on structurally defined catalyst surfaces and under well-defined mass transport conditions in combination with simulations for the description of electrocatalytic reactions is discussed.

Fano effect in a double T-shaped interferometer

We study the coherent transport in a one-dimensional lead with two side-coupled quantum dots using the Keldysh’s Green function formalism.The effect of the interdot Coulomb interaction is taken into account by computing the firstand second order contributions to the self-energy.We show that the Fano interference due to the resonance of one dotis strongly affected by the fixed parameters that characterize the second dot. If the second dot is tuned close to resonance an additionalpeak develops between the peak and dip of the Fano line shape of the current. In contrast, when the second dotis off-resonance and its occupation number is close to unity the interdot Coulomb interaction merely shifts the Fano line and no other maxima appear.The system we consider is more general than the single-dot interferometer studied experimentally by Kobayashi et al. [Phys. Rev. B 70, 035319 (2004)] and may be used for controlling quantum interference and studying decoherence effects in mesoscopic transport.

Optical methodology for detecting histologically unapparent nanoscale consequences of genetic alterations in biological cells

Recently, there has been a major thrust to understand biological processes at the nanoscale. Optical microscopy has been exceedingly useful in imaging cell microarchitecture. Characterization of cell organization at the nanoscale, however, has been stymied by the lack of practical means of cell analysis at these small scales. To address this need, we developed a microscopic spectroscopy technique, single-cell partial-wave spectroscopy (PWS), which provides insights into the statistical properties of the nanoscale architecture of biological cells beyond what conventional microscopy reveals. Coupled with the mesoscopic light transport theory, PWS quantifies the disorder strength of intracellular architecture. As an illustration of the potential of the technique, in the experiments with cell lines and an animal model of colon carcinogenesis we show that increase in the degree of disorder in cell nanoarchitecture parallels genetic events in the early stages of carcinogenesis in otherwise microscopically/histologically normal-appearing cells. These data indicate that this advance in single-cell optics represented by PWS may have significant biomedical applications.

THE INSTABILITY OF INTERNAL POTENTIAL IN DOUBLE-BARRIER STRUCTURE

This work reports the internal potential distributions in double-barrier structure due to electron-electron interaction in mesoscopic ac transport. We focus on the properties of the internal potential in some special external voltages. It is found that the internal potential is stable in general situations, but it becomes auto-fluctuating and even random fluctuating in some special cases. In these special cases, the system becomes unstable.

Multibody scattering, correlation, molecular conduction, and the 0.7 anomaly

We describe a new grid-based (or localized orbital-based) method for treating the effects of exchange and correlation on electronic transmission through a molecular target where there are initially other bound electrons. Our algorithm combines the approaches of (i) solid-state grid-based algorithms using self-energies and (ii) the complex Kohn method from electron-molecule scattering. For the general problem of a molecular target with n-electrons, our algorithm should ideally solve for electronic transmission with a computational cost scaling as n(2), although the present implementation is limited to one-dimensional problems. In this paper, we implement our algorithm to solve three one-dimensional model problems involving two electrons: (i) Single-channel resonant transmission through a double-barrier well (DBW), where the target already contains one bound-state electron [Rejec et al., Phys. Rev. B 67, 075311 (2003)]; (ii) multichannel resonant transmission through a DBW, where the incoming electron can exchange energy with the bound electron; (iii) transmission through a triple-barrier well (TBW), where the incoming electron can knock forward the bound electron, yielding a physical model of electron-assisted electron transfer. This article offers some insight about the role and size of exchange and correlation effects in molecular conduction, where few such rigorous calculations have yet been made. Such multibody effects have already been experimentally identified in mesoscopic electron transport, giving rise to the "0.7 anomaly," whereby electrons traveling through a narrow channel pair up as singlets and triplets. We expect the effect of electronic correlation to be even more visible for conduction through molecules, where electrons should partially localize into bonding and antibonding orbitals.

Towards a Dual‐Tip STM Application in Mesoscopic Electron Transport

AbstractA new design for a dual‐tip scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is presented. The design is a variation on the mechanically controllable break‐junction with two electron beam‐induced deposition nano‐tips. The new design enables one to scan surfaces simultaneously with two probes having a nano‐gap separation. By collecting the lateral current flowing between the tips, the transconductance map can then be compared with the STM images for local characterizations of the electron transport. Since the lateral beam carries the property of the density of states of the surface at momentum space, the dispersion of the electronic structure should give an orientation and position dependence of the local transconductance current. In addition, the reduced terminal separation, on the order of the characteristic mesoscopic length scales, is likely to be sensitive to a variety of typically observed interactions and interference effects.

Fano-type spin-flip mesoscopic transport through an Aharonov–Bohm interferometer

We have investigated the mesoscopic transport properties of a quantum dot embedded Aharonov–Bohm (AB) interferometer applied with a rotating magnetic field. The spin-flip effect is induced by the rotating magnetic field, and the tunneling current is sensitive to the spin-flip effect. The spin-flipped electrons tunneling from the direct channel and the resonant channel interfere with each other to form spin-polarized tunneling current components. The non-resonant tunneling (direct transmission) strength and the AB phase φ play important roles. When the non-resonant tunneling (background transmission) exists, the spin and charge currents form asymmetric peaks and valleys, which exhibit Fano-type line shapes by varying the source-drain bias voltage, or gate voltage. The AB oscillations of the spin and charge currents exhibit distinct dependence on the magnetic flux and direct tunneling strength.

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.

Comparison between Lagrangian and mesoscopic Eulerian modelling approaches for inertial particles suspended in decaying isotropic turbulence

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the accuracy of the mesoscopic approach proposed by Février et al. [P. Février, O. Simonin, K.D. Squires, Partitioning of particle velocities in gas–solid turbulent flows into a continuous field and a spatially uncorrelated random distribution: theoretical formalism and numerical study, J. Fluid Mech. 533 (2005) 1–46] by comparison against the Lagrangian approach for the simulation of an ensemble of non-colliding particles suspended in a decaying homogeneous isotropic turbulence given by DNS. The mesoscopic Eulerian approach involves to solve equations for a few particle PDF moments: number density, mesoscopic velocity, and random uncorrelated kinetic energy (RUE), derived from particle flow ensemble averaging conditioned by the turbulent fluid flow realization. In addition, viscosity and diffusivity closure assumptions are used to compute the unknown higher order moments which represent the mesoscopic velocity and RUE transport by the uncorrelated velocity component. A detailed comparison between the two approaches is carried out for two different values of the Stokes number based on the initial fluid Kolmogorov time scale, St K = 0.17 and 2.2 . In order to perform reliable comparisons for the RUE local instantaneous distribution and for the mesoscopic kinetic energy spectrum, the error due to the computation method of mesoscopic quantities from Lagrangian simulation results is evaluated and minimized. A very good agreement is found between the mesoscopic Eulerian and Lagrangian predictions for the small particle Stokes number case corresponding to the smallest particle inertia. For larger particle inertia, a bulk viscous term is included in the mesoscopic velocity governing equation to avoid spurious spatial oscillation that may arise due to the inability of the numerical scheme to resolve sharp number density gradients. As a consequence, for St K = 2.2 , particle number density and RUE spatial distribution predicted by the mesoscopic Eulerian approach are more smooth with respect to the ones measured from the Lagrangian simulations results. Similarly, the Eulerian approach underestimates the mesoscopic kinetic energy for the high wavenumber modes while the agreement remains very good for the low wavenumber modes. For both cases, the mesoscopic Eulerian approach provides a good prediction of the time dependent particle and fluid-particle velocity correlations measured by spatial averaging in the whole computational domain.

A Floquet–Green’s function approach to mesoscopic transport under ac bias

The current response of a mesoscopic system under a periodic ac bias is investigated bycombining the Floquet theorem and the nonequilibrium Green’s function method. Theband structure of the lead under ac bias is fully taken into account by using appropriateself-energies in an enlarged Floquet space. Both the retarded and lesser Green’s functionsare obtained in the Floquet basis to account for the interference and interaction effects. Inaddition to the external ac bias, the time-varying Coulomb interaction, whichis treated at the self-consistent Hartree–Fock level, provides another internalac field. The numerical results show that the time-varying Coulomb field yieldsdecoherence and reduces the ringing behavior of the current response to a harmonicbias.

SPIN RELATED TRANSPORT IN RASHBA 2DEG SYSTEMS

Transport in mesoscopic conductors is determined not only by orbital motion of carriers but also by quantum interference effect. However, it is well known that the quantum interference such as weak localization is much modified in the presence of spin-orbit interaction (SOI), leading to weak anti-localization. We discuss the origin of the Rashba SOI and spin related mesoscopic transport in InGaAs based two dimensional electron gases (2DEG) affected by the Rashba SOI. It is experimentally shown that the strength of the Rashba SOI in InGaAs 2DEG systems can be controlled by the gate voltage.1 The spin dynamics in solid systems is commonly determined by the competition between Zeeman effect and SOI. The spin relaxation time and dephasing time are studied from weak anti-localization analysis as a function of the relative strength of the Zeeman energy (EZ) and the Rashba SOI energy (E SOI ). The (EZ) was introduced by applying magnetic field parallel to the 2DEG plane. This in-pane magnetic field does not affect the orbital motion of electrons. The spin relaxation time increases with the Zeeman energy. The dephasing time associated with the spin-induced time reversal symmetry (TRS) breaking saturates when EZ becomes comparable to E SOI . Moreover, we show that the spin-induced TRS breaking mechanism is a universal function of the ratio EZ/E SOI within the experimental accuracy.2 Note from Publisher: This article contains the abstract only.

Underlying physical aspects of fluctuations in YBa 2Cu 3O 7− δ grain boundary Josephson junctions

High quality YBa 2Cu 3O 7− δ biepitaxial grain boundary junctions allowed one of the first evidences of macroscopic quantum behavior and mesoscopic transport in high critical temperature superconductors (HTS) systems. Both these studies touch delicate issues on fluctuations and give important feedback on the understanding of coherent transport of quasiparticles and of the dissipation mechanisms in HTS.

MEASURING SPIN HALL CONDUCTANCE AND RASHBA SPIN–ORBIT INTERACTION VIA ELECTRICAL MEASUREMENT IN Y SHAPE CONDUCTOR

We propose a multi-terminal (non-magnetic) mesoscopic electrical transport measurement for measuring spin Hall effect and Rashba spin–orbit strength. Our methods use a three terminal mesoscopic device, in which one of the terminals acts as a voltage probe. We show that the charge conductance, spin Hall conductance and voltage measured at the non-magnetic voltage probe depends on the strength of the Rashba spin–orbit interaction.

Coherent quasiparticle transport in grain boundary junctions employing high-Tc superconductors

Magneto-fluctuations of the normal resistance RN have been reproducibly observed in YBa2Cu3O7−δ biepitaxial grain boundary junctions at low temperatures. We attribute them to mesoscopic transport in narrow channels across the grain boundary line, occurring even in the presence of large voltage drops. The Thouless energy appears to be the relevant energy scale. Possible implications on the understanding of coherent transport of quasiparticles in high critical temperature superconductors (HTS) and of the dissipation mechanisms are discussed.

Spin-flip mesoscopic transport through a carbon nanotube quantum dot system

The pure spin transport in an entire metallic single-wall carbon-nanotube (SWCN) interacting quantum dot (QD) system is investigated by using non-equilibrium Green's function (NEGF) technique. The novel spin current performance introduced by one constant and one rotating magnetic fields shows the unique four-fold degenerate electron shell structure which exists the SWCN QD sensitively. Spin transport properties can be designed by tuning the orbital and Zeeman configuration in the central resonant region, which are greatly influenced by the Coulomb interaction and the magnetic fields.

Non-Abelian hydrodynamics and the flow of spin in spin–orbit coupled substances

Motivated by the heavy ion collision experiments there is much activity in studying the hydrodynamical properties of non-Abelian (quark–gluon) plasmas. A major question is how to deal with color currents. Although not widely appreciated, quite similar issues arise in condensed matter physics in the context of the transport of spins in the presence of spin–orbit coupling. The key insight is that the Pauli Hamiltonian governing the leading relativistic corrections in condensed matter systems can be rewritten in a language of SU(2) covariant derivatives where the role of the non-Abelian gauge fields is taken by the physical electromagnetic fields: the Pauli system can be viewed as Yang–Mills quantum-mechanics in a ‘fixed frame’, and it can be viewed as an ‘analogous system’ for non-Abelian transport in the same spirit as Volovik’s identification of the He superfluids as analogies for quantum fields in curved space time. We take a similar perspective as Jackiw and coworkers in their recent study of non-Abelian hydrodynamics, twisting the interpretation into the ‘fixed frame’ context, to find out what this means for spin transport in condensed matter systems. We present an extension of Jackiw’s scheme: non-Abelian hydrodynamical currents can be factored in a ‘non-coherent’ classical part, and a coherent part requiring macroscopic non-Abelian quantum entanglement. Hereby it becomes particularly manifest that non-Abelian fluid flow is a much richer affair than familiar hydrodynamics, and this permits us to classify the various spin transport phenomena in condensed matter physics in an unifying framework. The “particle based hydrodynamics” of Jackiw et al. is recognized as the high temperature spin transport associated with semiconductor spintronics. In this context the absence of faithful hydrodynamics is well known, but in our formulation it is directly associated with the fact that the covariant conservation of non-Abelian currents turns into a disastrous non-conservation of the incoherent spin currents of the high temperature limit. We analyze the quantum-mechanical single particle currents of relevance to mesoscopic transport with as highlight the Ahronov–Casher effect, where we demonstrate that the intricacies of the non-Abelian transport render this effect to be much more fragile than its abelian analog, the Ahronov–Bohm effect. We subsequently focus on spin flows protected by order parameters. At present there is much interest in multiferroics where non-collinear magnetic order triggers macroscopic electric polarization via the spin–orbit coupling. We identify this to be a peculiarity of coherent non-Abelian hydrodynamics: although there is no net particle transport, the spin entanglement is transported in these magnets and the coherent spin ‘super’ current in turn translates into electric fields with the bonus that due to the requirement of single valuedness of the magnetic order parameter a true hydrodynamics is restored. Finally, ‘fixed-frame’ coherent non-Abelian transport comes to its full glory in spin–orbit coupled ‘spin superfluids’, and we demonstrate a new effect: the trapping of electrical line charge being a fixed frame, non-Abelian analog of the familiar magnetic flux trapping by normal superconductors. The only known physical examples of such spin superfluids are the 3He A- and B-phase where unfortunately the spin–orbit coupling is so weak that it appears impossible to observe these effects.

Density correlations in ultracold atomic Fermi gases

We investigate density fluctuations in a coherent ensemble of interacting fermionic atoms. Adapting the concept of full counting statistics, well known from quantum optics and mesoscopic electron transport, we study second-order as well as higher-order correlators of density fluctuations. Using the mean-field BCS state to describe the whole interval between the BCS limit and the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) limit, we obtain an exact expression for the cumulant-generating function of the density fluctuations of an atomic cloud. In the two-dimensional case, we obtain a closed analytical expression. Poissonian fluctuations of a molecular condensate on the BEC side are strongly suppressed on the BCS side. The size of the fluctuations in the BCS limit is a direct measure of the pairing potential. We also discuss the BEC-BCS crossover of the third cumulant and the temperature dependence of the second cumulant.

Mesoscopic conductance fluctuations in high-Tc grain boundary Josephson junctions: Coherent quasiparticle transport

Magneto-fluctuations of the normal resistance RN have been reproducibly observed in YBa2Cu3O7−δ (HTS) biepitaxial grain boundary junctions at low temperatures. We attribute them to mesoscopic transport in narrow channels across the grain boundary line. The Thouless energy appears to be the relevant energy scale. Possible implications on the understanding of coherent transport of quasiparticles in HTS and of the dissipation mechanisms are discussed.