We performed electronic transport measurements on 1D InAs quantum wires. In sufficiently disordered wires, transport is dominated by Coulomb blockade, and the conductance can be well described by tunneling through a quantum dot embedded between two one-dimensional Luttinger liquid wires. In contrast to previous experiments in other material systems, in our system the conductance difference between peak to valley decreases with decreasing temperature for several consecutive peaks. This phenomenon is theoretically expected to occur only for strongly interacting systems with small Luttinger interaction parameter g < 1/2; we find for our InAs wires a value of g ≈ 0.4. Possible mechanisms leading to these strong correlations are discussed.PACS numbers: 73.23. Hk, 73.21.Hb, 71.10.Pm Extensive theoretical [1,2] and experimental [3][4][5] research has been devoted to one-dimensional (1D) InAs and InSb semiconductor nanowires (NWs) over the past few years. Such NWs, when put in proximity to a superconductor, are expected to host Majorana topological states due to strong spin-orbit coupling. The lack of a Schottky barrier with the metallic contact and the relatively large Landé factor make the experimental conditions for observing these exotic topological states quite feasible. Indeed, a zero bias peak as a signature of Majorana states was reported in InSb [4,5] and InAs [3] NWs in proximity to superconducting Nb and Al films, respectively.One of the main features in such 1D wires is the existence of ballistic helical states which are theoretically predicted [6] to exhibit nonmonotonic (up and down) conductance steps of size G 0 = e 2 /h as the electron density is varied by the gate voltage. Although many attempts have been made to measure these conductance steps, they have not been observed yet in either InAs or InSb NWs. This indicates that disorder plays an essential role, preventing the motion of the electrons between the contacts from being ballistic. It is well known that in 1D electronelectron interactions, described by the Luttinger-liquid (LL) model, amplify the role of disorder significantly, causing the conductance to vanish at zero temperature even for very weak disorder [7]. Experimentally, however, the effects of the interactions in NWs with strong spin-orbital scattering have not yet been reported.In this letter we report on experimental studies of electronic transport in disordered InAs NW at low temperatures over a wide range of electron densities. At very low densities we find the transport to be governed by Coulomb blockade, and at relatively high electron density by sequential tunneling through a series of barriers present in the disordered NW. We demonstrate that in both regimes the conductance is strongly affected by electron-electron interactions. The analysis of the temperature dependence of the conductance and of the line shape of the resonant tunneling in the Coulomb blockade regime within the framework of the existing theories [7] allows us to deduce the corresponding LL parameter g. We show ...
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.