English

Umklapp-Assisted Electron Transport Oscillations in Metal Superlattices

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2015-06-03 v1 Disordered Systems and Neural Networks

Abstract

We consider a superlattice of parallel metal tunnel junctions with a spatially non-homogeneous probability for electrons to tunnel. In such structures tunneling can be accompanied by electron scattering that conserves energy but not momentum. In the special case of a tunneling probability that varies periodically with period aa in the longitudinal direction, i.e., perpendicular to the junctions, electron tunneling is accompanied by "umklapp" scattering, where the longitudinal momentum changes by a multiple of h/ah/a. We predict that as a result a sequence of metal-insulator transitions can be induced by an external electric- or magnetic field as the field strength is increased.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1111.6462,
  title  = {Umklapp-Assisted Electron Transport Oscillations in Metal Superlattices},
  author = {S. I. Kulinich and L. Y. Gorelik and S. A. Gredeskul and R. I. Shekhter and M. Jonson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1111.6462},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

5 pages, 3 figures