Crook, R. and Prance, J. and Thomas, K. J. and Chorley, S. J. and Farrer, I. and Ritchie, D. A. and Pepper, M. and Smith, C. G. (2006) Conductance quantization at a half-integer plateau in a symmetric GaAs quantum wire. Science, 312 (5778). pp. 1359-1362. ISSN 0036-8075
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
We present data from an induced gallium arsenide ( GaAs) quantum wire that exhibits an additional conductance plateau at 0.5(2e(2)/h), where e is the charge of an electron and h is Planck's constant, in zero magnetic field. The plateau was most pronounced when the potential landscape was tuned to be symmetric by using low-temperature scanning-probe techniques. Source-drain energy spectroscopy and temperature response support the hypothesis that the origin of the plateau is the spontaneous spin-polarization of the transport electrons: a ferromagnetic phase. Such devices may have applications in the field of spintronics to either generate or detect a spin-polarized current without the complications associated with external magnetic fields or magnetic materials.