G. A. C. Jones

One-dimensional transport and the quantisation of the ballistic resistance

The authors present experimental results, and a supporting theory, showing that a one-dimensional system in which transport is ballistic possesses a quantised resistance, h/2ie2, where i is the number of occupied 1D sub-bands and the spin degeneracy is two. A short narrow channel is defined in the 2DEG of a GaAs-AlGaAs heterojunction and as the width of the system is changed, the sub-bands pass through the Fermi energy and the resistance jumps between quantised values. The value of the quantised resistance is derived and the accuracy of the quantisation is discussed. The effect can be strong at temperatures approximately 0.1 K, with up to 17 sub-bands being observed. The action of a transverse magnetic field is to depopulate the sub-bands and form hybrid levels; a parallel field lifts the spin degeneracy and brings about a further quantisation of resistance at values h/2(i+1/2)e2.

Probing Spin-Charge Separation in a Tomonaga-Luttinger Liquid

Electron Breakdown An electron possesses charge and spin. In general, these properties are confined to the electron. However, in strongly interacting many-body electronic systems, such as one-dimensional wires, it has long been theorized that the charge and spin should separate. There have been tantalizing glimpses of this separation experimentally, but questions remain. Jompol et al. (p. 597) looked at the tunneling current between an array of one-dimensional wires and a two-dimensional electron gas and argue that the results reveal a clear signature of spin-charge separation. Electronic spin and charge respond differently during tunneling between low-dimensional electron systems. In a one-dimensional (1D) system of interacting electrons, excitations of spin and charge travel at different speeds, according to the theory of a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) at low energies. However, the clear observation of this spin-charge separation is an ongoing challenge experimentally. We have fabricated an electrostatically gated 1D system in which we observe spin-charge separation and also the predicted power-law suppression of tunneling into the 1D system. The spin-charge separation persists even beyond the low-energy regime where the TLL approximation should hold. TLL effects should therefore also be important in similar, but shorter, electrostatically gated wires, where interaction effects are being studied extensively worldwide.

Ultrafast voltage sampling using single-electron wavepackets

We demonstrate an ultrafast voltage sampling technique using a stream of electron wavepackets. Electrons are emitted from a single-electron pump and travel through electron waveguides towards a detector potential barrier. Our electrons sample an instantaneous voltage on the gate upon arrival at the detector barrier. Fast sampling is achieved by minimising the duration that the electrons interact with the barrier, which can be made as small as a few picoseconds. The value of the instantaneous voltage can be determined by varying the gate voltage to match the barrier height to the electron energy, which is used as a stable reference. The test waveform can be reconstructed by shifting the electron arrival time against it. Although we find that the our current system is limited by the experimental line bandwidth to 12–18 GHz, we argue that this method has scope to increase the bandwidth of voltage sampling to 100 GHz and beyond.

High-frequency single-electron transport in a quasi-one-dimensional GaAs channel induced by surface acoustic waves

We report on an experimental investigation of the direct current induced by transmitting a surface acoustic wave (SAW) with frequency 2.7 GHz through a quasi-one-dimensional (1D) channel defined in a GaAs - AlGaAs heterostructure by a split gate, when the SAW wavelength was approximately equal to the channel length. At low SAW power levels the current reveals oscillatory behaviour as a function of the gate voltage with maxima between the plateaux of quantized 1D conductance. At high SAW power levels, an acoustoelectric current was observed at gate voltages beyond pinch-off. In this region the current displays a step-like behaviour as a function of the gate voltage (or of the SAW power) with the magnitude corresponding to the transfer of one electron per SAW cycle. We interpret this as due to trapping of electrons in the moving SAW-induced potential minima with the number of electrons in each minimum being controlled by the electron - electron interactions. As the number of electrons is reduced, the classical Coulomb charging energy becomes the Mott - Hubbard gap between two electrons and finally the system becomes a sliding Mott insulator with one electron in each well.

On-demand single-electron transfer between distant quantum dots

Single-electron circuits of the future, consisting of a network of quantum dots, will require a mechanism to transport electrons from one functional part of the circuit to another. For example, in a quantum computer decoherence and circuit complexity can be reduced by separating quantum bit (qubit) manipulation from measurement and by providing a means of transporting electrons between the corresponding parts of the circuit. Highly controlled tunnelling between neighbouring dots has been demonstrated, and our ability to manipulate electrons in single- and double-dot systems is improving rapidly. For distances greater than a few hundred nanometres, neither free propagation nor tunnelling is viable while maintaining confinement of single electrons. Here we show how a single electron may be captured in a surface acoustic wave minimum and transferred from one quantum dot to a second, unoccupied, dot along a long, empty channel. The transfer direction may be reversed and the same electron moved back and forth more than sixty times—a cumulative distance of 0.25 mm—without error. Such on-chip transfer extends communication between quantum dots to a range that may allow the integration of discrete quantum information processing components and devices.

Towards a quantum representation of the ampere using single electron pumps

Electron pumps generate a macroscopic electric current by controlled manipulation of single electrons. Despite intensive research towards a quantum current standard over the last 25 years, making a fast and accurate quantized electron pump has proved extremely difficult. Here we demonstrate that the accuracy of a semiconductor quantum dot pump can be dramatically improved by using specially designed gate drive waveforms. Our pump can generate a current of up to 150 pA, corresponding to almost a billion electrons per second, with an experimentally demonstrated current accuracy better than 1.2 parts per million (p.p.m.) and strong evidence, based on fitting data to a model, that the true accuracy is approaching 0.01 p.p.m. This type of pump is a promising candidate for further development as a realization of the SI base unit ampere, following a redefinition of the ampere in terms of a fixed value of the elementary charge.

Addition of the one-dimensional quantised ballistic resistance

The authors present experimental results showing that the quantised nature of the ballistic resistance in narrow channels is preserved when the electrons pass ballistically through two narrow constrictions. As the width of each narrow channel is varied independently, the resistance of the pair is equal to the resistance of the narrowest; this is explained by the conservation of quantum (sub-band) number. The absolute quantisation is not as accurate as observed in a single constriction and is modified by an anomalous resistance whose origin the authors discuss.

Enhanced coherent terahertz emission from indium arsenide in the presence of a magnetic field

We demonstrate enhancement of terahertz (THz) emission from indium arsenide at 170 K in magnetic fields (B) up to 8 T. An order of magnitude increase in visible to terahertz conversion efficiency was observed, with no suggestion of saturation of the TE polarization at higher magnetic fields. Free-space electro-optic sampling measurements confirmed the coherent nature of this radiation over the field range investigated, and gave an insight into the carrier motion subsequent to photoexcitation, which may be responsible for the observed THz power enhancement.

On-chip single photon emission from an integrated semiconductor quantum dot into a photonic crystal waveguide

We demonstrate the in-plane emission of highly polarized single photons from an InAs quantum dot embedded into a photonic crystal waveguide. The spontaneous emission rates are Purcell-enhanced by the coupling of the quantum dot to a slow-light mode of the waveguide. Photon-correlation measurements confirm the sub-Poissonian statistics of the in-plane emission. Under optical pulse excitation, single photon emission rates of up to 19 MHz into the guided mode are demonstrated, which corresponds to a device efficiency of 24%. These results herald the monolithic integration of sources in photonic quantum circuits.

Electrostatically defined heterojunction rings and the Aharonov–Bohm effect

Micron‐sized loops of high‐mobility two‐dimensional electron gas have been made on GaAs‐AlGaAs heterostructures using a novel split‐gate technique. Aharonov–Bohm oscillations of amplitude up to 20% of the device resistance have been observed at very low temperatures (T<100 mK), together with h/2e oscillations which appear to be due to interference between pairs of time‐reversed paths near B=0. The h/e period is found to vary by ∼25% with magnetic field, possibly as a result of the formation of edge states. In the quantum Hall effect, plateaus in Rxx are seen at high B due to variations in carrier concentration across the ring, which may cause backscattering of some edge states.