Biomedical subjects

L N Pfeiffer

Publications and source records attributed to L N Pfeiffer.

64 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

PubMed2001

Anisotropic disorder in high-mobility 2D heterostructures and its correlation to electron transport.

Surface morphology of high-mobility heterostructures is examined and correlated with dc transport. All samples examined show evidence of lines in the [11-0] direction with roughness ranging from small-amplitude features to severe anisotropic ridges. Transport in these samples is consistent with that in samples having artificially induced 1D charge modulations. The native surface properties reflect a prevalent, anisotropic disorder affecting 2D electron conduction. Importantly, the native lines are orthogonal to the stripes theoretically proposed to explain high Landau level transport anisotropies.

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PubMed2001

Observation of a linearly dispersing collective mode in a quantum hall ferromagnet.

Double-layer two-dimensional electron systems can exhibit a fascinating collective phase believed to display both quantum ferromagnetism and excitonic superfluidity. This unusual phase has recently been found to exhibit tunneling phenomena reminiscent of the Josephson effect. A key element of the theoretical understanding of this bizarre quantum fluid is the existence of linearly dispersing Goldstone collective modes. Using the method of tunneling spectroscopy, we have demonstrated the existence of these modes. We find the measured velocity to be in reasonable agreement with theoretical estimates.

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PubMed2001

Spectroscopic evidence for the localization of Skyrmions near nu = 1 as T --> 0.

Optically pumped nuclear magnetic resonance measurements of 71Ga spectra were carried out in an n-doped GaAs/Al(0.1)Ga0.9As multiple quantum well sample near the integer quantum Hall ground state nu = 1. As the temperature is lowered (down to T approximately 0.3 K), a "tilted plateau" emerges in the Knight shift data, which is a novel experimental signature of quasiparticle localization. The dependence of the spectra on both T and nu suggests that the localization is a collective process. The frozen limit spectra appear to rule out a 2D lattice of conventional Skyrmions.

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PubMed2001

Four-terminal resistance of a ballistic quantum wire.

The electrical resistance of a conductor is intimately related to the relaxation of the momentum of charge carriers. In a simple model, the accelerating force exerted on electrons by an applied electric field is balanced by a frictional force arising from their frequent collisions with obstacles such as impurities, grain boundaries or other deviations from a perfect crystalline order. Thus, in the absence of any scattering, the electrical resistance should vanish altogether. Here, we observe such vanishing four-terminal resistance in a single-mode ballistic quantum wire. This result contrasts the value of the standard two-probe resistance measurements of h/2e2 approximately 13 kOmega. The measurements are conducted in the highly controlled geometry afforded by epitaxial growth onto the cleaved edge of a high-quality GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure. Two weakly invasive voltage probes are attached to the central section of a ballistic quantum wire to measure the inherent resistance of this clean one-dimensional conductor.

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PubMed2001

Observation of multiple magnetorotons in the fractional quantum Hall effect.

Magnetorotons in the dispersions of collective gap excitation modes of fractional quantum Hall liquids are measured in resonant inelastic light scattering experiments. Two deep magnetoroton minima are observed at nu = 2/5, while a single deep minimum is resolved at nu = 1/3. The observations are the first evidence of multiple roton minima in gap excitations of the quantum liquids. The results support Chern-Simons and composite fermion calculations that predict multiple roton minima for states with nu>1/3.

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PubMed2001

Resonant tunneling into a biased fractional quantum Hall edge.

We observe resonant tunneling into a voltage biased fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) edge, using atomically sharp tunnel barriers unique to cleaved-edge overgrown devices. The resonances demonstrate different tunnel couplings to the metallic lead and the FQHE edge. Weak coupling to the FQHE edge produces clear non-Fermi liquid behavior with a sixfold increase in resonance area under bias arising from the power law density of states at the FQHE edge. A simple device model uses the resonant tunneling formalism for chiral Luttinger liquids to successfully describe the data.

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PubMed2001

Geometry-dependent dephasing in small metallic wires.

Temperature dependent weak localization is measured in metallic nanowires in a previously unexplored size regime down to width w = 5 nm. The dephasing time, tau(phi), shows a low temperature T dependence close to quasi-1D theoretical expectations (tau(phi) approximately T(-2/3)) in the narrowest wires, but exhibits a relative saturation as T-->0 for wide samples of the same material, as observed previously. As only sample geometry is varied to exhibit both suppression and divergence of tau(phi), this finding provides a new constraint on models of dephasing phenomena.

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PubMed2000

Reorientation of anisotropy in a square well quantum hall sample.

We have measured magnetotransport at half-filled high Landau levels in a quantum well with two occupied electric subbands. We find resistivities that are isotropic in perpendicular magnetic field but become strongly anisotropic at nu = 9/2 and 11/2 on tilting the field. The anisotropy appears at an in-plane field, B(ip) approximately 2.5 T, with the easy-current direction parallel to B(ip) but rotates by 90 degrees at B(ip) approximately 10 T and points now in the same direction as in single-subband samples. This complex behavior is in quantitative agreement with theoretical calculations based on a unidirectional charge density wave state model.

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PubMed2000

Resonantly enhanced tunneling in a double layer quantum hall ferromagnet.

The tunneling conductance between two parallel 2D electron systems has been measured in a regime of strong interlayer Coulomb correlations. At total Landau level filling nuT=1 the tunnel spectrum changes qualitatively when the boundary separating the compressible phase from the ferromagnetic quantized Hall state is crossed. A huge resonant enhancement replaces the strongly suppressed equilibrium tunneling characteristic of weakly coupled layers. The possible relationship of this enhancement to the Goldstone mode of the broken symmetry ground state is discussed.

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PubMed1995

Electronic states in gallium arsenide quantum wells probed by optically pumped NMR.

An optical pumping technique was used to enhance and localize nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) signals from an n-doped GaAs/Al0.1Ga0.9As multiple quantum well structure, permitting direct radio-frequency measurements of gallium-71 NMR spectra and nuclear spin-lattice relaxation rates (1/T1) as functions of temperature (1.6 K < T < 4.2 K) and the Landau level filling factor (0.66 < v < 1.76). The measurements reveal effects of electron-electron interactions on the energy levels and spin states of the two-dimensional electron system confined in the GaAs wells. Minima in 1/T1 at v approximately 1 and v approximately 2/3 indicate energy gaps for electronic excitations in both integer and fractional quantum Hall states. Rapid, temperature-independent relaxation at intermediate v values indicates a manifold of low-lying electronic states with mixed spin polarizations.

Arsenicals↗