2001/11/07 by Martin Moško, Martin Mosko, Mosko, Martin +7
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advancements in Semiconductor Devices and Circuit Design #FOS: Physical sciences #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Semiconductor Quantum Structures and Devices #cond-mat.mes-hall
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/0111116
14 pages, 9 figures
arxiv created 2001/11/07 · openalex publication_date 2001/11/07 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We model the effect of phase-breaking collisions on the coherent electron transport in a disordered one-dimensional single-channel wire. In our model the phase-breaking collisions break the wire into segments, where each segment is an independent series resistor with coherent electronic resistance and the segmentation is a stochastic process with Poisson distribution of phase-breaking scattering times. The wire resistance as a function of the wire length L, coherence length Lϕ, and localisation length ξ is calculated and the transition from coherent to incoherent transport is traced quantitatively. In the coherent regime (L < Lϕ) the resistance fluctuates from wire to wire with a characteristic log-normal distribution of resistances, the typical resistance increases as exp(L/ξ), and the mean resistance increases as exp(2L/ξ) (or faster if disorder is strong). As L exceeds Lϕ, decoherence suppresses the resistance fluctuations and narrows the resistance distribution. As a result, at L ≫ Lϕ the mean resistance increases as βL-c and the typical resistance as βL - c', where β is the wire resistivity, c is a constant shift due to the decoherence near the source electrode, and c' ≫ c is the shift related to the resistance self-averaging in a single wire. Numerical results are given for a GaAs quantum wire. It is noted that coherent transport in such wire can exhibit peculiar deviations from universal scaling owing to strong backscattering by impurities.