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.

We present a numerical study of dephasing of electron spin ensembles in a diffusive quasi-one-dimensional GaAs wire due to the D'yakonov-Perel' spin-dephasing mechanism. For widths of the wire below the spin precession length and for equal strength of Rashba and linear Dresselhaus spin-orbit fields a strong suppression of spin-dephasing is found. This suppression of spin-dephasing shows a strong dependence on the wire orientation with respect to the crystal lattice. The relevance for realistic cases is evaluated by studying how this effect degrades for deviating strength of Rashba and linear Dresselhaus fields, and with the inclusion of the cubic Dresselhaus term.

Fully direct written organic micro-thermoelectric generators embedded in a plastic foil

Electrical resistivities can be different for charge currents travelling parallel or perpendicular to the magnetization in magnetically ordered conductors or semiconductors, resulting in the well-known planar Hall effect and anisotropic magnetoresistance. Here, we study the analogous anisotropic magnetotransport behavior for magnons in a magnetic insulator Y3Fe5O12. Electrical and thermal magnon injection, and electrical detection methods are used at room temperature with transverse and longitudinal geometries to measure the magnon planar Hall effect and anisotropic magnetoresistance, respectively. We observe that the relative difference between magnon current conductivities parallel and perpendicular to the magnetization, with respect to the average magnon conductivity, i.e. |(σ m − σ m ⊥ )/σ m 0 | , is approximately 5% with the majority of the measured devices showing σ m ⊥ > σ m . arXiv:1612.08233v1 [cond-mat.mes-hall]

We observe that an rf microwave field strongly influences the transport of incoherent thermal magnons in yttrium iron garnet. Ferromagnetic resonance in the nonlinear regime suppresses thermal magnon transport by 95%. The transport is also modulated at non-resonant conditions in two cases, both related to the magnon band minimum. Firstly, a strong enhancement of the nonlocal signal appears at a static magnetic field below the resonance condition. This increase only occurs at one field polarity and can be as large as 800%. We attribute this effect to magnon kinetic processes, which give rise to band-minimum magnons and high-energy chiral surface modes. Secondly, the signal increases at a static field above the resonance condition, where the rf frequency coincides with the magnon band minimum. Our study gives insight into the interplay between coherent and incoherent spin dynamics: The rf field modifies the occupation of relevant magnon states and, via kinetic processes, the magnon spin transport. arXiv:1810.11667v1 [cond-mat.mes-hall]