Persistent current with fractional period in a multichannel Wigner crystal ring

✍ Scribed by A.A. Krokhin; I.V. Krive

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 95 KB
• Volume: 23
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0749-6036
• DOI: 10.1006/spmi.1996.0379

✦ Synopsis

We calculate the persistent current in a multichannel semiconductor ring with strongly correlated electrons when they form a Wigner crystal (WC). Pinning this crystal with a smooth gate potential leads to the suppression of the amplitude of the Aharonov-Bohm oscillations and to the fractionalization of the period. A fractional period 0 /w(w = 2, 3, . . . , 6) appears because of the strong coupling between channels in the tunneling process of the WC through the pinning barrier.