English

Charge transport of a spin-orbit-coupled Luttinger liquid

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2019-11-25 v2

Abstract

The charge transport of a (Tomonaga-)Luttinger liquid with tunnel barriers exhibits universal scaling: the current-voltage curves measured at various temperatures collapse into a single curve upon rescaling. The exponent characterizing this single curve can be used to extract the strength of electron-electron interaction. Motivated by a recent experiment on InAs nanowires [Sato et al., Phys. Rev. B 99, 155304 (2019)], we theoretically investigate the analogous behavior of a spin-orbit-coupled Luttinger liquid. We find that the scaling exponent differs for different impurity strengths, being weak (disorder potential) or strong (tunnel barriers), and their positions, either in the bulk or near the edge of the wire. For each case we quantify the exponent of the universal scaling and its modification due to the spin-orbit coupling. Our findings serve as a guide in the determination of the interaction strength of quasi-one-dimensional spin-orbit-coupled quantum wires from transport measurements.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1904.06869,
  title  = {Charge transport of a spin-orbit-coupled Luttinger liquid},
  author = {Chen-Hsuan Hsu and Peter Stano and Yosuke Sato and Sadashige Matsuo and Seigo Tarucha and Daniel Loss},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1904.06869},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

18 pages, 7 figures; accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. B