Quantum Interference Enhanced Rectification in Mesoscopic Nanowires

Abstract

Nanoscale nonreciprocal elements are needed to control signal flow in scalable quantum technologies, but existing nonreciprocal components are often bulky. Here, we show that a strongly nonreciprocal current-voltage relation can arise entirely from coherent elastic scattering in a mesoscopic Rashba nanowire with gate-defined scatterers. We first identify the symmetry constraints that enforce reciprocal transmission in a phase coherent conductor even when inversion and time-reversal symmetry are broken. We then show how gates that are capacitively coupled to the leads, together with a magnetic scatterer or transverse subband mixing, can remove these constraints. In the weak-scattering regime, nonreciprocal conductance originates from interference between distinct backscattering paths. In the strong-scattering regime, nonreciprocity can be resonantly enhanced by the hybridization of the transmitting channel with bound states that arise from a higher transverse subband or spin-split band. In this regime, we find that a bias-induced change in the gate potentials of about one percent can produce an order-unity diode response, i.e., electrons are transmitted almost as in a clean wire for one bias polarity, whereas for the other polarity the current is strongly suppressed.