Scanning-gate-induced effects in nonlinear transport through nanostructures

Abstract

We investigate the effect of a scanning gate tip in the nonlinear quantum transport properties of nanostructures. Generally, we predict that the symmetry of the current-voltage characteristic in reflection-symmetric samples is broken by a tip-induced rectifying conductance correction. Moreover, in the case of a quantum point contact (QPC), the tip-induced rectification term becomes dominant as compared to the change of the linear conductance at large tip-QPC distances. Calculations for a weak tip probing a QPC modeled by an abrupt constriction show that these effects are experimentally observable.

6 pages, 4 figures, revised and extended final version

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• Imaging Electron Interferometer
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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Partial local density of states from scanning gate microscopy
• Electron phase shift at the zero-bias anomaly of quantum point contacts
• Scanning Gate Microscopy of Quantum Contacts Under Parallel Magnetic Field: Beating Patterns Between Spin-Split Transmission Peaks or Channel Openings
• Asymmetric power dissipation in electronic transport through a quantum point contact