Condensed Matter Physics Seminar
Thursday, February 10, 2000, 2 p.m.
Plant Sciences Building, Room 1130
Electron transport in quantum wires connected to quantum dots
Konstantin Matveev
(Department of Physics, Duke University)
Abstract: We consider the motion of electrons in a one-dimensional
conductor, a quantum wire, connected to a quantum dot. Although the
electrons can move freely between the wire and the dot, the charging energy
of the dot prevents the low-energy electrons from leaving the wire.
If the wire is long, but finite, this effective Coulomb barrier leads to
quantization of the energy levels in the wire, with only a weak level broadening
caused by "virtual leakage" into the dot. This phenomenon can be
probed in an experiment measuring the tunneling into the wire. The
charge of the tunneling electron is confined to the wire, while its spin
can be transferred into the dot. This spatial spin-charge separation
results in periodic inverse square-root singularities in the tunneling
density of states.
Host: Victor Yakovenko
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