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Physical Review Letters

Coulomb blockade of tunneling into a quasi-one-dimensional wire

К. А. Матвеев, L. I. Glazman

Published Feb 15, 1993• 170 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Tunneling into the correlated electron system in a quantum wire is considered. For the first time, the problem is solved for an arbitrary number of transverse electron modes in the wire. The tunnel density of states has power-law asymptotics at low energies, \ensuremath{\nu}(\ensuremath{\epsilon})\ensuremath{\propto}${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\epsilon}}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}$. A sample formula expressing \ensuremath{\alpha} in terms of velocities of soundlike excitations (plasmons) propagating along the wire is obtained and the eigenvalue equation for these velocities is found. The general result for \ensuremath{\alpha} allows one to extrapolate correctly between the known cases of a one-mode wire and a wide three-dimensional wire.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.70.990

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Editions Frontières eBooks•Jun 29, 2006•0 citations
Tunneling into the correlated electron system in a quantum wire is considered. For the first time, the problem is solved for an arbitrary number of transverse electron modes in the wire. The tunnel density of states has power-law asymptotics at low energies, \ensuremath{\nu}(\ensuremath{\epsilon})\ensuremath{\propto}\ensuremathϵ\ensuremathα{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\epsilon}}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}\ensuremathϵ\ensuremathα. A sample formula expressing \ensuremath{\alpha} in terms of velocities of soundlike excitations (plasmons) propagating along the wire is obtained and the eigenvalue equation for these velocities is found. The general result for \ensuremath{\alpha} allows one to extrapolate correctly between the known cases of a one-mode wire and a wide three-dimensional wire.
Motivated by recent tunneling experiments in the parallel wire geometry, we calculate results for momentum resolved tunneling into a short one-dimensional wire, containing a small number of electrons. We derive some general theorems about the momentum dependence, and we carry out exact calculations for up to N=4N=4N=4 electrons in the final state, for a system with screened Coulomb interactions that models the situation of the experiments. We also investigate the limit of large NNN using a Luttinger-liquid type analysis. We consider the low-density regime, where the system is close to the Wigner crystal limit, and where the energy scale for spin excitations can be much lower than for charge excitations, and we consider temperatures intermediate between the relevant spin energies and charge excitations, as well as temperatures below both energy scales.
In the first part of our theoretical study of correlated atomic wires on substrates, we introduced lattice models for a one-dimensional quantum wire on a three-dimensional substrate and their approximation by quasi-one-dimensional effective ladder models [Abdelwahab et al., preceding paper, Phys. Rev. B 96, 035445 (2017)]. In this second part, we apply this approach to the case of a correlated wire with a Hubbard-type electron-electron repulsion deposited on an insulating substrate. The ground-state and spectral properties are investigated numerically using the density-matrix renormalization group method and quantum Monte Carlo simulations. As a function of the model parameters, we observe various phases with quasi-one-dimensional low-energy excitations localized in the wire, namely, paramagnetic Mott insulators, Luttinger liquids, and spin-1/21/21/2 Heisenberg chains. The validity of the effective ladder models is assessed for selected parameters by studying the dependence of results on the number of legs and comparing to the full three-dimensional model. We find that narrow ladder models accurately reproduce the quasi-one-dimensional excitations of the full three-dimensional model but predict only qualitatively whether excitations are localized around the wire or delocalized in the three-dimensional substrate.
Using the self-consistent Hartree-Fock approximation for spinless electrons at zero temperature, we study tunneling of the interacting electron gas through a single δ barrier in a finite one-dimensional wire connected to contacts.Our results exhibit features known from correlated many-body models.In particular, the conductance decays with the wire length as ∝ L -2α , where the power α is universal.We also show that a similar result for a wire conductance can be extracted from the persistent current (I) through the δ barrier in a one-dimensional ring, where it is known that I ∝ L -1-α .
Dynamical response theory is employed to investigate the effects of various transverse confinements on electron correlations in the ground state of a ferromagnetic one-dimensional quantum wire for different wire widths b and density parameters r s . In the regime of a thin quantum wire, electrons are treated as a one-dimensional gas under different confinement models via effective electron-electron interaction potentials. Using the first-order random phase approximation (FRPA) including self-energy and exchange contribution, which provides the ground-state structure beyond the random phase approximation, we numerically compute the structure factor, pair-correlation function, correlation energy, and ground-state energy for various values of b and r s . Our results reveal that the correlation energy depends on the choice of confinement model. For the ultrathin wire ( b → 0 ) in the high-density limit, we find that the correlation energy for transverse confinement models V 1 ( q ) (harmonic), V 2 ( q ) (cylindrical), and V 5 ( q ) (harmonic-delta) approaches ε c ( r s ) = − π 2 / 360 ∼ − 0.02741 a.u., which agrees with the exact results in this limit [P.-F. Loos, ; V. Ashokan, , ]. This clearly illustrates that for at least these three confinement potentials, the one-dimensional Coulomb potential can be regularized at interparticle distance x = 0 to yield the same correlation energy. In contrast, other confinement potentials, V 3 ( q ) (infinite square well), V 4 ( q ) (infinite square-infinite triangular well), and V 6 ( q ) (infinite square-delta well), do not approach the same high-density limit; instead, the correlation energy tends to ε c ∼ − 0.03002 a.u. for these potentials. The percentage difference in correlation energy between the confinement models V 1 ( q ) , V 2 ( q ) , V 5 ( q ) and V 3 ( q ) ,
We consider electrons in a quantum wire interacting via a long-range Coulomb potential screened by a nearby gate. We focus on the quantum phase transition from a strictly one-dimensional to a quasi-one-dimensional electron liquid that is controlled by the dimensionless parameter nx0n{x}_{0}nx0​, where nnn is the electron density and x0{x}_{0}x0​ is the characteristic length of the transverse confining potential. If this transition occurs in the low-density limit, it can be understood as the deformation of the one-dimensional Wigner crystal to a zigzag arrangement of the electrons described by an Ising order parameter. The critical properties are governed by the charge degrees of freedom and the spin sector remains essentially decoupled. At large densities, on the other hand, the transition is triggered by the filling of a second one-dimensional subband of transverse quantization. Electrons at the bottom of the second subband interact strongly due to the diverging density of states and become impenetrable. We argue that this stabilizes the electron liquid as it suppresses pair-tunneling processes between the subbands that would otherwise lead to an instability. However, the impenetrable electrons in the second band are screened by the excitations of the first subband, so that the transition is identified as a Lifshitz transition of impenetrable polarons. We discuss the resulting phase diagram as a function of nx0n{x}_{0}nx0​.
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.