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arXiv · 0708.0294

The influence of device geometry on many-body effects in quantum point contacts: Signatures of the 0.7 anomaly, exchange and Kondo

E. J. Koop·A. I. Lerescu·J. Liu·B. J. van Wees·D. Reuter·A. D. Wieck·C. H. van der Wal
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Abstract

The conductance of a quantum point contact (QPC) shows several features that result from many-body electron interactions. The spin degeneracy in zero magnetic field appears to be spontaneously lifted due to the so-called 0.7 anomaly. Further, the g-factor for electrons in the QPC is enhanced, and a zero-bias peak in the conductance points to similarities with transport through a Kondo impurity. We report here how these many-body effects depend on QPC geometry. We find a clear relation between the enhanced g-factor and the subband spacing in our QPCs, and can relate this to the device geometry with electrostatic modeling of the QPC potential. We also measured the zero-field energy splitting related to the 0.7 anomaly, and studied how it evolves into a splitting that is the sum of the Zeeman effect and a field-independent exchange contribution when applying a magnetic field. While this exchange contribution shows sample-to-sample fluctuations and no clear dependence on QPC geometry, it is for all QPCs correlated with the zero-field splitting of the 0.7 anomaly. This provides evidence that the splitting of the 0.7 anomaly is dominated by this field-independent exchange splitting. Signatures of the Kondo effect also show no regular dependence on QPC geometry, but are possibly correlated with splitting of the 0.7 anomaly.

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E. J. Koop, A. I. Lerescu, J. Liu, B. J. van Wees, D. Reuter, A. D. Wieck, C. H. van der Wal. 2007-10-02. The influence of device geometry on many-body effects in quantum point contacts: Signatures of the 0.7 anomaly, exchange and Kondo. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10948-007-0289-5

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