Carrier-carrier inelastic scattering events for spatially separated electrons: Magnetic asymmetry and turnstile electron transfer

Abstract

We consider a single electron traveling along a strictly one-dimensional quantum wire interacting with another electron in a quantum ring capacitively coupled to the wire. We develop an exact numerical method for treating the scattering problem within the stationary two-electron wave function picture. The considered process conserves the total energy but the electron within the wire passes a part of its energy to the ring. We demonstrate that the inelastic scattering results in both magnetic asymmetry of the transfer probability and a turnstile action of the ring on the electrons traveling separately along the ring. We demonstrate that the inelastic backscattering and / or inelastic electron transfer can be selectively eliminated from the process by inclusion of an energy filter into the wire in form of a double barrier system with the resonant energy level tuned to the energy of the incident electron. We demonstrate that the magnetic symmetry is restored when the inelastic backscattering is switched off, and the turnstile character of the ring is removed when the energy transfer to the ring is excluded for both transferred and backscattered electron waves. We discuss the relation of the present results to the conductance systems based on the electron gas.

Fractional conductance oscillations in quantum rings: wave packet picture of transport in a few-electron system

“…The present study is based on wave packet dynamics which was previously used for a description of Lorentz force effects [11,12] and multi-subband transport [13] for a single electron. Electron transfer effects for a single electron within a channel coupled capacitively to another electron confined in a nearby quantum dot [14] or a quantum ring [15] have also been discussed. The Aharonov-Bohm effect for manyelectron rings has been previously studied by Kotimäki and Räsänen [16] using time-dependent density functional theory and a singly connected quantum ring.…”