Objective
The project is devoted to an investigation of the electron structure and transport properties of open mesoscopic structures, in which the electron-electron interaction and spin polarization are fundamentally important. A significant property of these structures is that the electron- electron interaction has a twofold manifestation. Firstly, the interaction creates electron correlations. Secondly, and this is a specific property of open mesoscopic structures, the electron density (the charge and the spin) is redistributed between a low-dimensional structure and electron reservoirs producing variations in the correlations and in the electron energy.
The project includes the following points:
1. Spontaneous spin polarization in a quantum wire coupled to electron reservoirs. It will be found out if the spin polarization arises smoothly or like a phase transition and how the spin polarization affects the conductance;
2. The potential distribution in quantum wires under far from equilibrium conditions. Of importance is a question of the contact properties. It will be clarified what part of the applied voltage drops in the contacts and how the electron density, the charge and the potential vary under an applied bias. The experiment will be carried out using multi-terminal structures in which several (2-3) wires will be potentiometric probes to the main wire connected to the reservoirs. These structures will also be used to study the exchange interaction effect on the pile-up of charge in quantum wires and their conductance by applying a longitudinal magnetic field;
3. The conductance of a small-size open quantum dot. In this structures one-electron oscillations of the conductance appear due to spin-charge separation. The period, temperature, and the magnetic-field dependence of these oscillations will be investigated to determine the role of the Kondo effect and mesoscopic spin quantization in their origination;
4. Shot noise in single-mode quantum wires with a tunable potential barrier. This experiment will provide information about the quasiparticle charge, which is fractional according to the Luttinger liquid theory;
5. The resistance and shot noise in ballistic contacts with electron-electron scattering will be calculated to find out whether the electron-electron scattering contributes to transport properties of mesoscopic ballistic systems;
6. Charge-density waves related to short-range electron correlations in a Luttinger liquid. The most pronounced effect due to these waves is a soft mode recently found in the collective excitation spectrum. This mode will be investigated theoretically to clarify if it affects the ground state and susceptibility;
7. The dephasing effects in mesoscopic systems. Experiments will be done to determine the low-temperature dephasing rates from measurements of mesoscopic fluctuations of Coulomb drag in parallel diffusive wires. The dephasing effects in transport properties of quantum contacts and Aharonov-Bohm rings will be theoretically studied to determine what manifestations of the interaction with a thermal bath are observable at zero temperature.
The project will be fulfilled by four teams:
Geneva University team led by Professor M. Buttiker, the coordinator
Grenoble team led by Professor J.-C. Portal
Moscow team led by Professor V.A. Sablikov
Novosibirsk team led by Professor Z.D. Kvon
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
Data not availableCoordinator
1211 Geneva
Switzerland