arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to P. S. Alekseev.
The dynamic coupling between spin and charge currents in non-magnetic conductors is considered. As a consequence of this coupling, the spin dynamics is directly reflected in the electrical impedance of the sample, with a relevant frequency scale defined by spin relaxation and spin diffusion. This allows the observation of the electron spin resonance by purely electrical measurements.
One of the main macroscopic differences between ordinary and highly viscous fluids is the lack of transverse sound in the first and possibility of its excitation in the second. In modern high-mobility conductors (Weyl semimetals, best-quality quantum wells, and graphene) electrons can form a viscous fluid at low temperatures. In this work we develop high-frequency hydrodynamics of two-dimensional highly viscous electron fluids in magnetic field. Such fluids are characterized by simultaneous presence of the excitations associated with the elastic stress (transverse sound) as well as with the violation of the local charge neutrality (plasmons). We demonstrate that both the viscoelastic and the plasmonic components of a flow can exhibit the viscous resonance that was recently proposed for charged viscous fluids. This resonance is related to rotation of the viscous stress tensor of a charged fluid in magnetic field. We argue that the viscous resonance is responsible for the peak and the peculiarities observed in photoresistance and photovoltage of the ultra-high mobility GaAs quantum wells. We conclude that a highly viscous electron fluid ("electron honey") is realized in those structures.
In ultra-pure conductors, collective motion of charge carriers at relatively high temperatures may become hydrodynamic such that electronic transport may be described similarly to a viscous flow. In confined geometries (e.g., in ultra-high quality nanostructures), the resulting flow is Poiseuille-like. When subjected to a strong external magnetic field, the electric current in semimetals is pushed out of the bulk of the sample towards the edges. Moreover, we show that the interplay between viscosity and fast recombination leads to the appearance of counterflows. The edge currents possess a non-trivial spatial profile and consist of two stripe-like regions: the outer stripe carrying most of the current in the direction of the external electric field and the inner stripe with the counterflow.
In ultra-high quality two-dimensional (2D) materials the mean free paths of phonons and electrons relative to all mechanisms of scattering can be much greater than a size of a sample. In this case the most intensive type of scattering of particles is their collisions with sample edges and the ballistic regime of heat and charge transport is realized. We study the ballistic transport of classical interacting 2D particles in a long narrow sample. We show that the inter-particle scattering conserving momentum leads to a positive hydrodynamic correction to the ballistic conductance, which is a precursor of the viscous Poiseuille flow. We examine the effect of weak magnetic field on the electron ballistic conductance and predict a novel classical ballistic mechanism for negative magnetoresistance. Our analysis demonstrates that, apparently, such mechanism explains the temperature-independent part of the giant negative magnetoresistance recently observed in the ultra-high mobility GaAs quantum wells.
Two-dimensional (2D) electrons in high-quality nanostructures at low temperatures can form a viscous fluid. We develop a theory of high-frequency magnetotransport in such fluid. The time dispersion of viscosity should be taken into account at the frequencies about and above the rate of electron-electron collisions. We show that the shear viscosity coefficients as functions of magnetic field and frequency have the only resonance at the frequency equal to the doubled cyclotron frequency. We demonstrate that such resonance manifests itself in the plasmon damping. Apparently, the predicted resonance is also responsible for the peaks and features in photoresistance and photovoltage, recently observed on the best-quality GaAs quantum wells. The last fact should considered as an important evidence of forming a viscous electron fluid in such structures.
Ultra-pure conductors may exhibit hydrodynamic transport where the collective motion of charge carriers resembles the flow of a viscous fluid. In a confined geometry (e.g., in ultra-high quality nanostructures) the electronic fluid assumes a Poiseuille-like flow. Applying an external magnetic field tends to diminish viscous effects leading to large negative magnetoresistance. In two-component systems near charge neutrality the hydrodynamic flow of charge carriers is strongly affected by the mutual friction between the two constituents. At low fields, the magnetoresistance is negative, however at high fields the interplay between electron-hole scattering, recombination, and viscosity results in a dramatic change of the flow profile: the magnetoresistance changes its sign and eventually becomes linear in very high fields. This novel non-monotonic magnetoresistance can be used as a fingerprint to detect viscous flow in two-component conducting systems.
Two-component conductors -- e.g., semi-metals and narrow band semiconductors -- often exhibit unusually strong magnetoresistance in a wide temperature range. Suppression of the Hall voltage near charge neutrality in such systems gives rise to a strong quasiparticle drift in the direction perpendicular to the electric current and magnetic field. This drift is responsible for a strong geometrical increase of resistance even in weak magnetic fields. Combining the Boltzmann kinetic equation with sample electrostatics, we develop a microscopic theory of magnetotransport in two and three spatial dimensions. The compensated Hall effect in confined geometry is always accompanied by electron-hole recombination near the sample edges and at large-scale inhomogeneities. As the result, classical edge currents may dominate the resistance in the vicinity of charge compensation. The effect leads to linear magnetoresistance in two dimensions in a broad range of parameters. In three dimensions, the magnetoresistance is normally quadratic in the field, with the linear regime restricted to rectangular samples with magnetic field directed perpendicular to the sample surface. Finally, we discuss the effects of heat flow and temperature inhomogeneities on the magnetoresistance.
At low temperatures, in very clean two-dimensional (2D) samples the electron mean free path for collisions with static defects and phonons becomes greater than the sample width. Under this condition, the electron transport occurs by formation of a viscous flow of an electron fluid. We study the viscous flow of 2D electrons in a magnetic field perpendicular to the 2D layer. We calculate the viscosity coefficients as the functions of magnetic field and temperature. The off-diagonal viscosity coefficient determines the dispersion of the 2D hydrodynamic waves. The decrease of the diagonal viscosity in magnetic field leads to negative magnetoresistance which is temperature- and size dependent. Our analysis demonstrates that the viscous mechanism is responsible for the giant negative magnetoresistance recently observed in the ultra-high-mobility GaAs quantum wells. We conclude that 2D electrons in that structures in moderate magnetic fields should be treated as a viscous fluid.
The spin-orbit interaction of 2D electrons in the quantum wells grown from the III-V semiconductors consists of the two parts with different symmetry: the Bychkov-Rashba and the Dresselhaus terms. The last term is usually attributed to the bulk spin-orbit Hamiltonian which reflects the Td symmetry of the zincblende lattice. While it is known that the quantum well interfaces may also contribute to the Dresselhaus term, the exact structure and the relative importance of the interface and the bulk contributions are not well understood yet. To compare the bulk contribution with the interface one, we perform tight-binding calculations of the spin splittings of the electron levels in [100] GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells and analyze the obtained spin splittings within the one-band effective mass electron Hamiltonian containing the two interface contributions to the Dresselhaus term. We show that the dependencies of the spin splittings on the quantum well width and the electric field along the growth direction are perfectly reproduced by the analytical one-band calculations and the magnitude of the interface contribution to the spin-orbit interaction for sufficiently narrow quantum wells is of the same order as the contribution from the bulk Dresselhaus Hamiltonian.
We report a nonsaturating linear magnetoresistance in charge-compensated bilayer graphene in a temperature range from 1.5 to 150 K. The observed linear magnetoresistance disappears away from charge neutrality ruling out the traditional explanation of the effect in terms of the classical random resistor network model. We show that experimental results qualitatively agree with a phenomenological two-fluid model taking into account electron-hole recombination and finite-size sample geometry.
We present magnetotransport measurements at classical magnetic fields for three graphene monolayers with various levels of disorder. A square root magnetoresistance (SRMR) behavior is observed in one sample which has the characteristic sub-linear conductivity signaling on the presence of short-range disorder in this sample. No square root MR was observed in other samples where short-range scattering is inessential as it is evident from the gate voltage dependences of their conductivities. Comparing our experimental data for the sample with theoretical calculations we found a good qualitative agreement and established the conditions which should be fulfilled in graphene to observe the SRMR experimentally.
Two-component systems with equal concentrations of electrons and holes exhibit non-saturating, linear magnetoresistance in classically strong magnetic fields. The effect is predicted to occur in finite-size samples at charge neutrality in both disorder- and interaction-dominated regimes. The phenomenon originates in the excess quasiparticle density developing near the edges of the sample due to the compensated Hall effect. The size of the boundary region is of the order of the electron-hole recombination length that is inversely proportional to the magnetic field. In narrow samples and at strong enough magnetic fields, the boundary region dominates over the bulk leading to linear magnetoresistance. Our results are relevant for semimetals and narrow-band semiconductors including most of the topological insulators.
We study the tunneling of conduction electrons through a (110)-oriented single-barrier heterostructure grown from III-V semiconductor compounds. It is shown that, due to low spatial symmetry of such a barrier, the tunneling current through the barrier leads to an electron spin polarization. The inverse effect, generation of a direct tunneling current by spin polarized electrons, is also predicted. We develop the microscopic theory of the effects and show that the spin polarization emerges due to the combined action of the Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling within the barrier and the Rashba spin-orbit coupling at the barrier interfaces.
We study theoretically magnetoresistance (MR) of graphene with different types of disorder. For short-range disorder, the key parameter determining magnetotransport properties---a product of the cyclotron frequency and scattering time---depends in graphene not only on magnetic field $H$ but also on the electron energy $\varepsilon$. As a result, a strong, square-root in $H$, MR arises already within the Drude-Boltzmann approach. The MR is particularly pronounced near the Dirac point. Furthermore, for the same reason, "quantum" (separated Landau levels) and "classical" (overlapping Landau levels) regimes may coexist in the same sample at fixed $H.$ We calculate the conductivity tensor within the self-consistent Born approximation for the case of relatively high temperature, when Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations are suppressed by thermal averaging. We predict a square-root MR both at very low and at very high $H:$ $[\varrho_{xx}(H)-\varrho_{xx}(0)]/\varrho_{xx}(0)\approx C \sqrt{H},$ where $C$ is a temperature-dependent factor, different in the low- and strong-field limits and containing both "quantum" and "classical" contributions. We also find a nonmonotonic dependence of the Hall coefficient both on magnetic field and on the electron concentration. In the case of screened charged impurities, we predict a strong temperature-independent MR near the Dirac point. Further, we discuss the competition between disorder- and collision-dominated mechanisms of the MR. In particular, we find that the square-root MR is always established for graphene with charged impurities in a generic gated setup at low temperature.
A theory of resonant spin-dependent tunneling has been developed for symmetrical double-barrier structures grown of non-centrosymmetrical semiconductors. The dependence of the tunneling transparency on the spin orientation and the wave vector of electrons leads to (i) spin polarization of the transmitted carriers in an in-plane electric field, (ii) generation of an in-plane electric current under tunneling of spin-polarized carriers. These effects originated from spin-orbit coupling-induced splitting of the resonant level have been considered for double-barrier tunneling structures.
A theory of spin-dependent electron transmission through resonant tunneling diode (RTD) grown of non-centrosymmetrical semiconductor compounds has been presented. It has been shown that RTD can be employed for injection and detection of spin-polarized carriers: (i) electric current flow in the interface plane leads to spin polarization of the transmitted carriers, (ii) transmission of the spin-polarized carriers through the RTD is accompanied by generation of an in-plane electric current. The microscopic origin of the effects is the spin-orbit coupling-induced splitting of the resonant level.