Quantum rings for beginners: Energy spectra and persistent currents

We have done a study with small, imperfect Hubbard rings with exact diagonalization. The results for few-electron rings show, that the imperfection, whether localized or not, nearly always decrease, but can also \emph{increase} the persistent current, depending on the character of the imperfection and the on-site interaction. The calculations are generally in agreement with more specialized studies. In most cases the electron spin plays an important role.

We study the pinning of few-electron charge densities by weak perturbations to circular quantum ring potentials. We find that the pinning by weak defects is only allowed when the symmetry of the classical few-electron lowest-energy configuration agrees with the symmetry of the external potential. We indicate that whenever the pinning is allowed by the symmetry, its strength is an oscillatory function of the external magnetic field. In the magnetic fields for which the pinning...

Persistent currents flowing through disordered mesoscopic rings threaded by a magnetic flux are investigated. Models of fermions with on-site interactions (Hubbard model) or models of spinless fermions with nearest neighbor interactions are considered on 2D cylinders with twisted boundary conditions in one direction to account for a magnetic flux. Self-consistent Hartree-Fock methods are used to treat the electron-electron interaction beyond first order. We show that the seco...

We investigate the difference in the response of a one-dimensional semiconductor quantum ring and a finite-width ring to a strong and short-lived time-dependent perturbation in the THz regime. In both cases the persistent current is modified through a nonadiabatic change of the many-electron states of the system, but by different mechanisms in each case.

We report the solution of the persistent current in two coupled rings in the presence of external magnetic fluxes. We showed that the magnetic fluxes modify the global phase of the electronic wave function for multiple connected geometry formed by the coupled rings. We obtained an exact solution for the persistent current and investigated the exact solution numerically. For two large coupled rings with equal fluxes, we found that the persistent current in the two coupled ring...

The electronic transport of a noninteracting quantum ring side-coupled to a quantum wire is studied via a single-band tunneling tight-binding Hamiltonian. We found that the system develops an oscillating band with antiresonances and resonances arising from the hybridization of the quasibound levels of the ring and the coupling to the quantum wire. The positions of the antiresonances correspond exactly to the electronic spectrum of the isolated ring. Moreover, for a uniform qu...

We present numerical results for the zero temperature persistent currents carried by interacting spinless electrons in disordered one dimensional continuous rings. The disorder potential is described by a collection of delta-functions at random locations and strengths. The calculations are performed by a self-consistent Hartree-Fock (H-F) approximation. Because the H-F approximation retains the concept of single-electron levels, we compare the statistics of energy levels of n...

Persistant current in isolated mesoscopic rings is studied using the continium and tight-binding models of independent electrons. The calculation is performed with disorder and also at finite temperature. In the absence of disorder and at zero temperature agreement is obtained with earlier results by D. Loss et. al., in that there is half quantum flux periodicity for a large and odd number of electrons, but full quantum periodicity for any even number of electrons in the ring...

We consider the effect of an oscillating potential on the single-particle spectrum and the time-averaged persistent current of a one-dimensional phase-coherent mesoscopic ring with a magnetic flux. We show that in a ring with an even number of spinless electrons the oscillating potential has a strong effect on the persistent current when the excited side bands are close to the eigen levels of a pure ring. Resonant enhancement of side bands of the Floquet state generates a sig...

We investigate theoretically electron spin states in one dimensional (1D) and two dimensional (2D) hard-wall mesoscopic rings in the presence of both the Rashba spin-orbit interaction (RSOI) and the Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction (DSOI) in a perpendicular magnetic field. The Hamiltonian of the RSOI alone is mathematically equivalent to that of the DSOI alone using an SU(2) spin rotation transformation. Our theoretical results show that the interplay between the RSOI and D...