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Journal of Physics Conference Series

Impurity induced current oscillations in one-dimensional conductors

Sergey N. Artemenko, D. S. Shapiro, R R Vakhitov, S. V. Remizov

Published Nov 1, 2009• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

We study theoretically electronic transport through an isolated local defect in a 1D conductor described in terms of the Luttinger liquid, and show that the well-known tunneling regime of electronic transport leading to power-law I-V curves takes place only in the limit of small voltage. At voltages exceeding a threshold value a new dynamic regime of transport starts in which the DC current induces AC oscillations of frequency f = /e. In gated quantum wires where interaction between electrons is short-ranged, generation linewidth is small provided the inter-electronic repulsion is strong enough, otherwise a wide-band noise is generated. In case of long-range Coulomb interaction generation is coherent at any interaction strength. The effect is related to interaction of the current with Friedel oscillations of the electronic density around the impurity. Manifestations of the effect resemble the Coulomb blockade and the Josephson effect. Oscillations of the electric current are accompanied by spin current oscillations. The results are related to semiconducting quantum wires, metallic atomic chains, carbon nanotubes, graphene nanoribbons and others.

DOI
10.1088/1742-6596/193/1/012119

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We study theoretically electronic transport through an isolated local defect in a 1D conductor described in terms of the Luttinger liquid, and show that the well-known tunneling regime of electronic transport leading to power-law I-V curves takes place only in the limit of small voltage. At voltages exceeding a threshold value a new dynamic regime of transport starts in which the DC current induces AC oscillations of frequency f = /e. In gated quantum wires where interaction between electrons is short-ranged, generation linewidth is small provided the inter-electronic repulsion is strong enough, otherwise a wide-band noise is generated. In case of long-range Coulomb interaction generation is coherent at any interaction strength. The effect is related to interaction of the current with Friedel oscillations of the electronic density around the impurity. Manifestations of the effect resemble the Coulomb blockade and the Josephson effect. Oscillations of the electric current are accompanied by spin current oscillations. The results are related to semiconducting quantum wires, metallic atomic chains, carbon nanotubes, graphene nanoribbons and others.
The electronic transport through a single impurity in a repulsive Luttinger liquid (LL) has been theoretically studied. It has been found that the direct current Ī above the threshold voltage related to the strength of the impurity potential is accompanied by coherent oscillations with frequency f = Ī / e . There is an analogy with the Josephson junctions: the well-known regime of the power-law I − V curves in the LL corresponds to the damping of the Josephson current below the critical one, while the oscillatory regime in the LL can be compared with the Josephson oscillations above the critical current.
The spin transport as the current flows through an impurity in a one-dimensional conductor is analyzed. The interacting electrons are described in terms of the Luttinger liquid theory. Both the Coulomb and short-range interactions are considered; the latter appears when the gate screens the long-range part of the Coulomb potential. The cases of magnetic and nonmagnetic impurities are considered. It has been revealed that, for a magnetic impurity, the electric current flow induces the generation of the spin current, which has direct and alternating components. At low temperatures and voltages, the current can be completely spin-polarized. For a nonmagnetic impurity, the spin current generation is absent. The spin current flowing though the wire affects the current-voltage characteristic for both magnetic and nonmagnetic impurities. The results have been obtained for a rather strong electron-electron interaction.
Several recent results concerning frequency dependent and nonlinear transport of one-dimensional correlated electrons are reviewed. The frequency dependent conductance of a Luttinger liquid is discussed. For zero-range interaction the conductance is similar to that of a non-interacting ideal quantum wire, with a renormalized zero-frequency limit. For a screened Coulomb potential, the conductance as a function of the frequency shows features of the elementary excitations. They can be simulated in terms of a capacitance, an inductance and a resistance. The non-linear DC-conductance of the Luttinger liquid in presence of a tunnel barrier shows Coulomb blockade if the interaction is of finite range. The capacitance scales in the same way as for the system without the tunnel barrier. The linear DC-response of a tunnel barrier as a function of the frequency and the voltage of a monochromatic driving field shows oscillations which can be interpreted as signature of a frequency-induced depinning of a charge density wave.
We analyze the transport properties of a Luttinger liquid with an embedded impurity of explicitly time-dependent strength. We employ a radiative boundary condition formalism to describe the coupling to the voltage sources. Assuming the impurity time dependence to be oscillatory, we present a full analytic perturbative result in impurity strength for arbitrary interaction parameter calculated with the help of Coulomb gas expansion (CGE). Moreover, a full analytic solution beyond the above restriction is possible for a special nontrivial interaction strength which has been achieved independently by full resummation of CGE series as well as via refermionization technique. The resulting nonlinear current-voltage characteristic turns out to be very rich due to the presence of the additional energy scale associated with the impurity oscillation frequency. In accordance with the previous studies, we also find an enhancement of the linear conductance of the wire to values above the unitary limit G0=2e2∕h{G}_{0}=2{e}^{2}∕hG0​=2e2∕h.
We study theoretically the transport properties of an interacting quantum wire in the presence of a time-dependent point impurity. Using the Keldysh formalism within the framework of Luttinger liquid model, we calculate and analyze the dc contribution of the backscattered current and the shot noise of the system with arbitrary Luttinger interaction strength and impurity position. From some numerical examples, we find that the time-dependent point impurity in the wire can enhance the total current in the strongly interaction regime, and the total current enhancement is dependent on both the impurity potential frequency and the equivalent frequency in relation to the drain-source voltage VVV. The dc contribution of the backscattered current oscillates as a function of impurity frequency with the period depending on the Luttinger interaction strength. Furthermore, the oscillation of the dc contribution of the backscattered current is not a finite-length effect, which is different from that in the case of system with a static point impurity, and the oscillation characteristic is also connected with VVV. However, the final current-noise relation is similar to that in the case of a static point impurity.
Asymmetric current-voltage [I(V)][I(V)][I(V)] curves, known as the diode or rectification effect, in one-dimensional electronic conductors can have their origin from scattering off a single asymmetric impurity in the system. We investigate this effect in the framework of the Tomonaga-Luttinger model for electrons with spin. We show that electron interactions strongly enhance the diode effect and lead to a pronounced current rectification even if the impurity potential is weak. For strongly interacting electrons and not too small voltages, the rectification current ${I}_{r}=[I(V)+I(\ensuremath{-}V)]∕2$, measuring the asymmetry in the current-voltage curve, has a power-law dependence on the voltage with a negative exponent, ${I}_{r}\ensuremath{\sim}{V}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\mid}z\ensuremath{\mid}}$, leading to a bump in the current-voltage curve.