E. Zipper

Wave function engineering in quantum dot–ring nanostructures

Modern nanotechnology allows the production of, depending on the application, various quantum nanostructures with selected properties. These properties are strongly influenced by the confinement potential which can be modified e.g. by electrical gating. In this paper, we analyze a nanostructure composed of a quantum dot surrounded by a quantum ring. We show that, depending on the details of the confining potential, the electron wave functions can be located in different parts of the structure. Since many properties of such a nanostructure strongly depend on the distribution of the wave functions, by varying the applied gate voltage one can easily control them. In particular, we illustrate the high controllability of the nanostructure by demonstrating how its coherent, optical and conducting properties can be drastically changed by a small modification of the confining potential.

Spin relaxation in semiconductor quantum rings and dots?a comparative study

We calculate spin relaxation times due to spin-orbit-mediated electron-phonon interactions for experimentally accessible semiconductor quantum ring and dot architectures. We elucidate the differences between the two systems due to different confinement. The estimated relaxation times (at B = 1 T) are in the range between a few milliseconds to a few seconds. This high stability of spin in a quantum ring allows us to test it as a spin qubit. A brief discussion of quantum state manipulations with such a qubit is presented.The implementation of a spin qubit in a quantum ring occupied by one or a few electrons is proposed. Quantum bit involves the Zeeman sublevels of the highest occupied orbital. Such a qubit can be initialized, addressed, manipulated, read out and coherently coupled to other quantum rings. An extensive discussion of relaxation and decoherence is presented. By analogy with quantum dots, the spin relaxation times due to spin-orbit interaction for experimentally accessible quantum ring architectures are calculated. The conditions are formulated under which qubits build on quantum rings can have long relaxation times of the order of seconds. Rapidly improving nanofabrication technology have made such ring devices experimentally feasible and thus promising for quantum state engineering. PACS numbers: 73.21.La 85.30.De 72.25.Rb 71.70.Ej Semiconductor quantum ring 2

Flux qubit on a mesoscopic nonsuperconducting ring

The possibility of making a flux qubit on a nonsuperconducting mesoscopic ballistic quasi-one-dimensional ring is discussed. We showed that such a ring can be effectively reduced to a two-state system with two external control parameters. The two states carry opposite persistent currents and are coupled by tunneling, which leads to a quantum superposition of states. The qubit states can be manipulated by resonant microwave pulses. The flux state of the sample can be measured by a superconducting quantum interference device magnetometer. Two or more qubits can be coupled by the flux the circulating currents generate. The problem of decoherence is also discussed.

Persistent currents in carbon nanotubes

Persistent currents driven by a static magnetic flux parallel to the carbon nanotube axis are investigated. Owing to the hexagonal symmetry of graphene the Fermi contour expected for a 2D-lattice reduces to two points. However the electron or hole doping shifts the Fermi energy upwards or downwards and as a result, the shape of the Fermi surface changes. Such a hole doping leading to the Fermi level shift of (more or less) 1eV has been recently observed experimentally. In this paper we show that the shift of the Fermi energy changes dramatically the persistent currents and discuss the electronic structure and possible currents for zigzag as well as armchair nanotubes.

Coherence of currents in mesoscopic cylinders

The persistent currents driven by the pure Aharonov-Bohm type magnetic field in mesoscopic normal metal or semiconducting cylinders are studied. A two-dimensional (2D) Fermi surfaces are characterized by four parameters. Several conditions for the coherence and enhancement of currents are discussed. These results are then generalized to a three-dimensional (3D) thin-walled cylinder to show that under certain geometric conditions on the Fermi surface, a novel effect - the appearance of spontaneous currents is predicted.

Charge transport through a semiconductor quantum dot-ring nanostructure

Transport properties of a gated nanostructure depend crucially on the coupling of its states to the states of electrodes. In the case of a single quantum dot the coupling, for a given quantum state, is constant or can be slightly modified by additional gating. In this paper we consider a concentric dot-ring nanostructure (DRN) and show that its transport properties can be drastically modified due to the unique geometry. We calculate the dc current through a DRN in the Coulomb blockade regime and show that it can efficiently work as a single-electron transistor (SET) or a current rectifier. In both cases the transport characteristics strongly depend on the details of the confinement potential. The calculations are carried out for low and high bias regime, the latter being especially interesting in the context of current rectification due to fast relaxation processes.

ESR in GdxRe1-xAl2 (Re=La, Lu, Y) - the experimental and the theoretical studies

Abstract The ESR measurements in Gd x Re 1- x Al 2 (Re=La, Lu, Y) in high concentration range are presented. The theoretical analysis of ESR data in the whole concentration range x ϵ (0,1), which explains consistently the observed positive g shifts in unbottlenecked region and negative g shifts in bottlenecked region exhibits unambigously the d-character of band electrons in these compounds.

Dot-ring nanostructure: Rigorous analysis of many-electron effects.

We discuss the quantum dot-ring nanostructure (DRN) as canonical example of a nanosystem, for which the interelectronic interactions can be evaluated exactly. The system has been selected due to its tunability, i.e., its electron wave functions can be modified much easier than in, e.g., quantum dots. We determine many-particle states for Ne = 2 and 3 electrons and calculate the 3- and 4-state interaction parameters, and discuss their importance. For that purpose, we combine the first- and second-quantization schemes and hence are able to single out the component single-particle contributions to the resultant many-particle state. The method provides both the ground- and the first-excited-state energies, as the exact diagonalization of the many-particle Hamiltonian is carried out. DRN provides one of the few examples for which one can determine theoretically all interaction microscopic parameters to a high accuracy. Thus the evolution of the single-particle vs. many-particle contributions to each state and its energy can be determined and tested with the increasing system size. In this manner, we contribute to the wave-function engineering with the interactions included for those few-electron systems.

Engineering of Electron States and Spin Relaxation in Quantum Rings and Quantum Dot-Ring Nanostructures

Quantum nanostructures are frequently referred to as artificial atoms. Like the natural atoms they show a discrete spectrum of energy levels but at the same time they exhibit new physics which has no analogue in real atoms. Electrons in an atom are attracted to the nucleus by a potential that diminishes inversely proportional to the distance from the center of the atom. This feature, together with the Coulomb interactions between electrons, determines properties of natural atoms. On the other hand, in quantum nanostructures one can (almost) freely design the shape of the confinement potential. As a result, a variety of properties of quantum nanostructure can be modified according to the designer’s will.

Entanglement of qubits via a nonlinear resonator

Coherent coupling of two qubits mediated by a nonlinear resonator is studied. It is shown that the amount of entanglement accessible in the evolution depends on both the strength of nonlinearity in the Hamiltonian of the resonator and on the initial preparation of the system. The created entanglement survives in the presence of decoherence.