Search results for "TUNNEL"

Real-space Wigner-Seitz Cells Imaging of Potassium on Graphite via Elastic Atomic Manipulation

2015

Atomic manipulation in the scanning tunnelling microscopy, conventionally a tool to build nanostructures one atom at a time, is here employed to enable the atomic-scale imaging of a model low-dimensional system. Specifically, we use low-temperature STM to investigate an ultra thin film (4 atomic layers) of potassium created by epitaxial growth on a graphite substrate. The STM images display an unexpected honeycomb feature, which corresponds to a real-space visualization of the Wigner-Seitz cells of the close-packed surface K atoms. Density functional simulations indicate that this behaviour arises from the elastic, tip-induced vertical manipulation of potassium atoms during imaging, i.e. el…

Direct observation of second-order atom tunnelling

2007

Tunnelling of material particles through a classically impenetrable barrier constitutes one of the hallmark effects of quantum physics. When interactions between the particles compete with their mobility through a tunnel junction, intriguing novel dynamical behaviour can arise where particles do not tunnel independently. In single-electron or Bloch transistors, for example, the tunnelling of an electron or Cooper pair can be enabled or suppressed by the presence of a second charge carrier due to Coulomb blockade. Here we report on the first direct and time-resolved observation of correlated tunnelling of two interacting atoms through a barrier in a double well potential. We show that for we…

2015

AbstractAtomic manipulation in the scanning tunnelling microscopy, conventionally a tool to build nanostructures one atom at a time, is here employed to enable the atomic-scale imaging of a model low-dimensional system. Specifically, we use low-temperature STM to investigate an ultra thin film (4 atomic layers) of potassium created by epitaxial growth on a graphite substrate. The STM images display an unexpected honeycomb feature, which corresponds to a real-space visualization of the Wigner-Seitz cells of the close-packed surface K atoms. Density functional simulations indicate that this behaviour arises from the elastic, tip-induced vertical manipulation of potassium atoms during imaging,…

Wide-range thermometer based on the temperature-dependent conductance of planar tunnel junctions

2000

The effect of the Fermi–Dirac distribution on the current through standard planar tunnel junctions is a suitable basis for thermometry in a wide temperature range. In particular, it extends the range spanned by Coulomb-blockade thermometers up to room temperature.

Competition of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya and Higher-Order Exchange Interactions in Rh/Fe Atomic Bilayers on Ir(111)

2018

Using spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy and density functional theory we demonstrate the occurrence of a novel type of noncollinear spin structure in $\mathrm{Rh}/\mathrm{Fe}$ atomic bilayers on Ir(111). We find that higher-order exchange interactions depend sensitively on the stacking sequence. For fcc-$\mathrm{Rh}/\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{Ir}(111)$, frustrated exchange interactions are dominant and lead to the formation of a spin spiral ground state with a period of about 1.5 nm. For hcp-$\mathrm{Rh}/\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{Ir}(111)$, higher-order exchange interactions favor an up-up-down-down ($\ensuremath{\uparrow}\ensuremath{\uparrow}\ensuremath{\downarrow}\ensuremath{\downarrow}$) s…

Counting atoms using interaction blockade in an optical superlattice.

2008

We report on the observation of an interaction blockade effect for ultracold atoms in optical lattices, analogous to Coulomb blockade observed in mesoscopic solid state systems. When the lattice sites are converted into biased double wells, we detect a discrete set of steps in the well population for increasing bias potentials. These correspond to tunneling resonances where the atom number on each side of the barrier changes one by one. This allows us to count and control the number of atoms within a given well. By evaluating the amplitude of the different plateaus, we can fully determine the number distribution of the atoms in the lattice, which we demonstrate for the case of a superfluid …

Persistent currents in a circular array of Bose-Einstein condensates

2002

A ring-shaped array of Bose-Einstein condensed atomic gases can display circular currents if the relative phase of neighboring condensates becomes locked to certain values. It is shown that, irrespective of the mechanism responsible for generating these states, only a restricted set of currents are stable, depending on the number of condensates, on the interaction and tunneling energies, and on the total number of particles. Different instabilities due to quasiparticle excitations are characterized and possible experimental setups for testing the stability prediction are also discussed.

Asymmetric Tunneling Conductance and the non-Fermi Liquid Behavior of Strongly Correlated Fermi Systems

2018

Tunneling differential conductivity (or resistivity) is a sensitive tool to experimentally test the nonFermi liquid behavior of strongly correlated Fermi systems. In the case of common metals the Landau– Fermi liquid theory demonstrates that the differential conductivity is a symmetric function of bias voltage V . This is because the particle-hole symmetry is conserved in the Landau–Fermi liquid state. When a strongly correlated Fermi system turns out to be near the topological fermion condensation quantum phase transition, its Landau–Fermi liquid properties disappear so that the particle-hole symmetry breaks making the differential tunneling conductivity to be asymmetric function of V . Th…

Surface Acoustic Bloch Oscillations, the Wannier-Stark Ladder, and Landau-Zener Tunneling in a Solid

2010

We present the experimental observation of Bloch oscillations, the Wannier-Stark ladder, and Landau-Zener tunneling of surface acoustic waves in perturbed grating structures on a solid substrate. A model providing a quantitative description of our experimental observations, including multiple Landau-Zener transitions of the anticrossed surface acoustic Wannier-Stark states, is developed. The use of a planar geometry for the realization of the Bloch oscillations and Landau-Zener tunneling allows a direct access to the elastic field distribution. The vertical surface displacement has been measured by interferometry.

Mechanism of self-trapped hole motion in corundum crystals

1993

Abstract Atomistic simulations of the self-trapped hole eauilibrium geometry and migration in a pure corundum crystal have been carried out using the semiempirical method of intermedia te neglect of differential overlap and atom-atom potentials, as implemented in the CASCADE code. The activation energies for three different hole-hopping mechanisms are calculated. It is shown that the 60° reorientations of a self-trapped hole and hopping to the nearest O-atom triangle reauire almost the same activation energy, approximately 0.9 eV, which agrees auite well with the experi-mental value for hole migration of 0.7 eV. A new mechanism of small-polaron motion is suggested.