Transport through a quantum ring, a dot and a barrier embedded in a nanowire in magnetic field

TL;DR

This paper studies electron transport in a nanowire with embedded quantum structures under a magnetic field, revealing Aharonov-Bohm oscillations and detailed scattering processes through advanced numerical methods.

Contribution

It introduces a mixed momentum-coordinate approach to analyze scattering in magnetic fields and provides high-resolution maps of scattering wave functions in complex nanostructures.

Findings

Observation of Aharonov-Bohm oscillations with resonances

High-resolution scattering wave function maps

Analysis of conductance through barriers and wells

Abstract

We investigate the transport through a quantum ring, a dot and a barrier embedded in a nanowire in a homogeneous perpendicular magnetic field. To be able to treat scattering potentials of finite extent in magnetic field we use a mixed momentum-coordinate representation to obtain an integral equation for the multiband scattering matrix. For a large embedded quantum ring we are able to obtain Aharanov-Bohm type of oscillations with superimposed narrow resonances caused by interaction with quasi-bound states in the ring. We also employ scattering matrix approach to calculate the conductance through a semi-extended barrier or well in the wire. The numerical implementations we resort to in order to describe the cases of weak and intermediate magnetic field allow us to produce high resolution maps of the ``near field'' scattering wave functions, which are used to shed light on the underlying scattering processes.