Steplike electric conduction in a classical two-dimensional electron system through a narrow constriction in a microchannel

TL;DR

This study uses molecular dynamics simulations to explore how a classical two-dimensional electron system conducts electricity through a narrow constriction, revealing steplike conductance behavior similar to experimental observations.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the number of conductance steps matches the number of electron streamlines and identifies density fluctuations as a key factor in smoothing conductance steps.

Findings

Conductance exhibits steplike increases with constriction strength.

Number of steps correlates with electron streamlines.

Density fluctuations influence conductance smoothness.

Abstract

Using molecular dynamics simulation, we investigate transport properties of a classical two-dimensional electron system confined in a microchannel with a narrow constriction. As a function of the confinement strength of the constriction, the calculated conductance in the simulations exhibits steplike increases as reported in a recent experiment [D. G. Rees et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 026803 (2011)]. It is confirmed that the number of the steps corresponds to the number of stream lines of electrons through the constriction. We verify that density fluctuation plays a major role in smoothing the steps in the conductance.