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Bound states in the continuum (BICs) are exotic, localized states even though their energy lies in the continuum spectra. Since its discovery in 1929, the quest to unveil these exotic states in charge transport experiments remains an active pursuit in condensed matter physics. Here, we study charge transport in InSb nanowire networks in the ballistic regime and subject to a perpendicular magnetic field as ideal candidates to observe and control the appearance of BICs. We find that BICs reveal themselves as distinctive resonances or antiresonances in the conductance by varying the applied magnetic field and the Fermi energy. We systematically consider different lead connections in hashtag-like nanowire networks, finding the optimal configuration that enhances the features associated with the emergence of BICs. Finally, the investigation focuses on the effect of the Rashba spin-orbit interaction of InSb on the occurrence of BICs in nanowire networks. While the interaction generally plays a detrimental role in the signatures of the BICs in the conductance of the nanowire networks, it opens the possibility to operate these nanostructures as spin filters for spintronics. We believe that this work could pave the way for the unambiguous observation of BICs in charge transport experiments and for the development of advanced spintronic devices., Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, supplementary material. Submission to SciPost

In this paper, a comprehensive study of the effects of Ni-doping on structural, electrical, thermal and magnetic properties of the NbB2 is presented. Low amounts (\leq 10 %) of Ni substitution on Nb sites cause structural distortions and induce drastic changes in the physical properties, such as the emergence of a bulk superconducting state with anomalous behaviors in the critical fields (lower and upper) and in the specific heat. Ni-doping at the 9 at.% level, for instance, is able to increase the critical temperature (TC) in stoichiometric NbB2 (< 1.3 K) to approximately 6.0 K. Bulk superconductivity is confirmed by magnetization, electronic transport, and specific heat measurements. Both Hc1 and Hc2 critical fields exhibit a linear dependence with reduced temperature (T/TC), and the specific heat deviates remarkably from the conventional exponential temperature dependence of the single-band BCS theory. These findings suggest multiband superconductivity in the composition range from 0.01 \leq x \leq 0.10., Comment: Keywords: Multiband superconductivity; NbB2 system; Ni substitution; Linear critical fields

The physical properties of the Zr$_5$Pt$_3$ compound with interstitial carbon in hexagonal D8$_8$-structure was investigated. A set of macroscopic measurements reveal a bulk superconducting at approximately 7 K for Zr$_5$Pt$_3$C$_{0.3}$ close to Zr$_5$Pt$_3$, also with a correlate anomalous resistivity behavior. However, both the signatures of strong electron-electron interaction, and the electronic contribution to specific heat, increase dramatically with the C doping. For the first time the x-ray photoelectron spectra compared with DFT/PWLO calculations of electronic structure show a complex Fermi surface with high density of states for Zr$_5$Pt$_3$. Also results show the signature of unconventional superconductivity. Indeed, was observed an unusual behavior for lower and upper critical field diagrams of Zr$_5$Pt$_3$C$_{0.3}$. The temperature dependence of penetration length and electronic contribution to specific heat suggests that electronic pairing deviates of $s$-wave the BCS scenario., Comment: 6 pages, 11 figures, changed discussion about superconductivity

We study the quantization of Dirac fermions in lithographically defined graphene nanoconstrictions. We observe quantized conductance in single nanoconstrictions fabricated on top of a thin hexamethyldisilazane layer over a Si/SiO_2 wafer. This nanofabrication method allows us to obtain well defined edges in the nanoconstrictions, thus reducing the effects of edge roughness on the conductance. We prove the occurrence of ballistic transport and identify several size quantization plateaus in the conductance at low temperature. Experimental data and numerical simulations show good agreement, demonstrating that the smoothing of the plateaus is not related to edge roughness but to quantum interference effects., Comment: Accepted for publication in physica status solidi (a)

In this paper an effective integrable non-linear model describing the electron spin dynamics in a deformable helical molecule with weak spin-orbit coupling is presented. Non-linearity arises from the electron-lattice interaction and it enables the formation of a variety of stable solitons such as bright solitons, breathers and rogue waves, all of them presenting well defined spin projection onto the molecule axis. A thorough study of the soliton solutions is presented and discussed.

It is widely admitted that the helical conformation of certain chiral molecules may induce a sizable spin selectivity observed in experiments. Spin selectivity arises as a result of the interplay between a helicity-induced spin-orbit coupling and electric dipole fields in the molecule. From the theoretical point of view, different phenomena might affect the spin dynamics in helical molecules, such as quantum dephasing, dissipation and the role of metallic contacts. Previous studies neglected the local deformation of the molecule about the carrier thus far, but this assumption seems unrealistic to describe charge transport in molecular systems. We introduce an effective model describing the electron spin dynamics in a deformable helical molecule with weak spin-orbit coupling. We find that the electron-lattice interaction allows the formation of stable solitons such as bright solitons with well defined spin projection onto the molecule axis. We present a thorough study of these bright solitons and analyze their possible impact on the spin dynamics in deformable helical molecules.

Many-body interactions can produce novel ground states in a condensed-matter system. For example, interacting electrons and holes can spontaneously form excitons, a neutral bound state, provided that the exciton binding energy exceeds the energy separation between the single particle states. Here we report on electrical transport measurements on spatially separated two-dimensional electron and hole gases with nominally degenerate energy subbands, realized in an InAs(10 nm)/GaSb(5 nm) coupled quantum well. We observe a narrow and intense maximum (~500 k\Omega) in the four-terminal resistivity in the charge neutrality region, separating the electron-like and hole-like regimes, with a strong activated temperature-dependence above T = 7 K and perfect stability against quantizing magnetic fields. By quantitatively comparing our data with early theoretical predictions, we show that such unexpectedly large resistance in our nominally zero-gap semi-metal system is probably due to the formation of an excitonic insulator state.

We report on magneto-transport measurements up to 30 T performed on a bilayer graphene Hall bar, enclosed by two thin hexagonal boron nitride flakes. Our high mobility sample exhibits an insulating state at neutrality point which evolves into a metallic phase when a strong in-plane field is applied, as expected for a transition from a canted antiferromagnetic to a ferromagnetic spin ordered phase. For the first time we individuate a temperature-independent crossing in the four-terminal resistance as a function of the total magnetic field, corresponding to the critical point of the transition. We show that the critical field scales linearly with the perpendicular component of the field, as expected from the underlying competition between the Zeeman energy and interaction-induced anisotropies. A clear scaling of the resistance is also found and an universal behavior is proposed in the vicinity of the transition.

In this paper, we study a theoretical method to calculate the conductance across a square barrier potential in monolayer graphene. We have obtained an analytical expression for the transmission coefficient across a potential barrier for monolayer graphene. Using the transmission coefficient obtained we have an analytical expression for the conductance. This expression will be used to calculate the conductance in the case in which there is a potential barrier, which in our case will modelise the behaviour of a top gate voltage of a field effect transistor. Once this analysis has been performed we study the scenario in which carriers scatter with the potential barrier with different incidence angles and we have found that for any incident angle an effective gap is induced.

We use the circularly polarized resonant Rayleigh scattering (RRS) to study the quantum Hall ferromagnet at $\nu$ = 1. At this filling factor we observe a right handed copolarized RRS which probes the Skyrmion spin texture of the electrons in the photoexcited grounds state. The resonant scattering is not present in the left handed copolarization, and this can be related to the correlation between Skymionic effects, screening and spin wave excitations. These results evidence that RRS is a valid method for the study of the spin texture of the quantum Hall states.

We study the quantum Hall liquid and the metal-insulator transition in a high mobility two dimensional electron gas, by means of photoluminescence and magneto-transport. In the integer and fractional regime at nu > 1/3, analyzing the emission energy dispersion we probe the magneto-Coulomb screening and the hidden symmetry of the electron liquid. In the fractional regime above above nu =1/3 the system undergoes the metal-to-insulator transition, and in the insulating phase the dispersion becomes linear with evidence of an increased renormalized mass.

The quantum Hall effect in a single-layer graphene sample is studied in strong magnetic fields up to 28 T. Our measurements reveal the existence of a metal- insulator transition from filling factor $\nu=-2$ to $\nu=0$. The value of the universal scaling exponent is found to be $\kappa=0.57 $ in graphene and therefore in a truly two-dimensional system. This value of $\kappa$ is in agreement with the accepted universal value for the plateau-insulator transitions in standard quasi two-dimensional electron and hole gases., Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures

A new mechanism of tunnelling at macroscopic distances is proposed for a wave packet localized in one-dimensional disordered potential with mirror symmetry, V(-x)=V(x). Unlike quantum tunnelling through a regular potential barrier, which occurs only at the energies lower then the barrier height, the proposed mechanism of tunnelling exists even for weak white-noise-like scattering potentials. It also exists in classical circuits of resonant contours with random resonant frequencies. The latter property may be used as a new method of secure communication, which does not require coding and decoding of the transmitting signal., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures

We report the experimental study of resonant Rayleigh scattering in GaAs-AlGaAs superlattices with ordered and intentionally disordered potential profiles (correlated and uncorrelated) in the growth direction z. We show that the intentional disorder along z modify markedly the energy dispersion of the dephasing rates of the excitons. The application of an external magnetic field in the same direction allows the continuous tuning of the in plane exciton localization and to study the interplay between the in plane and vertical disorder., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. Submittes to Phys. Rev. B

A system of an array of side-coupled quantum-dots attached to a quantum wire is studied theoretically. Transport through the quantum wire is investigated by means of a noninteracting Anderson tunneling Hamiltonian. Analytical expressions of the transmission probability and phase are given. The transmission probability shows an energy spectrum with forbidden and allowed bands that depends on the up-down asymmetry of the system. In up-down symmetry only the gap survives, and in up-down asymmetry an allowed band is formed. We show that the allowed band arises by the indirect coupling between the up and down quantum dots. In addition, the band edges can be controlled by the degree of asymmetry of the quantum dots. We discuss the analogy between this phenomenon with the Dicke effect in optics., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures. To appear in Physica E

We designed and performed low temperature DC transport characterization studies on two-dimensional electron gases confined in lattice-matched In$_{0.53}$Ga$_{0.47}$As/In$_{0.52}$Al$_{0.48}$As quantum wells grown by molecular beam epitaxy on InP substrates. The nearly constant mobility for samples with the setback distance larger than 50nm and the similarity between the quantum and transport life-time suggest that the main scattering mechanism is due to short range scattering, such as alloy scattering, with a scattering rate of 2.2 ps$^{-1}$. We also obtain the Fermi level at the In$_{0.53}$Ga$_{0.47}$As/In$_{0.52}$Al$_{0.48}$As surface to be 0.36eV above the conduction band, when fitting our experimental densities with a Poisson-Schr\"odinger model., Comment: Accepted in Applied Physics Letters

The symmetry properties of the resistance of mesoscopic samples in the quantum Hall regime are investigated. In addition to the reciprocity relation, our samples obey new symmetries, that relate resistances measured with different contact configurations. Different kinds of symmetries are identified, depending on whether the magnetic field value is such that the system is above, or below, a quantum Hall transition. Related symmetries have recently been reported for macroscopic samples in the quantum Hall regime by Ponomarenko {\it et al.} (Solid State Commun. {\bf 130}, 705 (2004)), and Karmakar {\it et al.} (Preprint cond-mat/0309694).

We study the four-terminal resistance fluctuations of mesoscopic samples near the transition between the $\nu=2$ and the $\nu=1$ quantum Hall states. We observe near-perfect correlations between the fluctuations of the longitudinal and Hall components of the resistance. These correlated fluctuations appear in a magnetic-field range for which the two-terminal resistance of the samples is quantized. We discuss these findings in light of edge-state transport models of the quantum Hall effect. We also show that our results lead to an ambiguity in the determination of the width of quantum Hall transitions., Comment: As published

We present a novel model to calculate single-electron states in random quantum dot superlattices made of wide-gap semiconductors. The source of disorder comes from the random arrangement of the quantum dots (configurational disorder) as well as spatial inhomogeneities of their shape (morphological disorder). Both types of disorder break translational symmetry and prevent the formation of minibands, as occurs in regimented arrays of quantum dots. The model correctly describes channel mixing and broadening of allowed energy bands due to elastic scattering by disorder.

We present a novel model to calculate vertical transport properties such as conductance and current in unintentionally disordered double barrier GaAs-Al$_x$Ga$_{1-x}$As heterostructures. The source of disorder comes from interface roughness at the heterojunctions (lateral disorder) as well as spatial inhomogeneities of the Al mole fraction in the barriers (compositional disorder). Both lateral and compositional disorder break translational symmetry along the lateral direction and therefore electrons can be scattered off the growth direction. The model correctly describe channel mixing due to these elastic scattering events. In particular, for realistic degree of disorder, we have found that the effects of compositional disorder on transport properties are negligible as compared to the effects due to lateral disorder., Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures

We study the electronic properties of GaAs-AlGaAs superlattices with intentional correlated disorder by means of photoluminescence and vertical dc resistance. The results are compared to those obtained in ordered and uncorrelated disordered superlattices. We report the first experimental evidence that spatial correlations inhibit localization of states in disordered low-dimensional systems, as our previous theoretical calculations suggested, in contrast to the earlier belief that all eigenstates are localized., Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. Physical Review Letters (in press)

We investigate the dynamical processes taking place in nanodevices driven by high-frequency electromagnetic fields. We want to elucidate the role of different mechanisms that could lead to loss of quantum coherence. Our results show how the dephasing effects of disorder that destroy after some periods coherent oscillations, such as Rabi oscillations, can be overestimated if we do not consider the electron-electron interactions that can reduce dramatically the decoherence effects of the structural imperfections. Experimental conditions for the observation of the predicted effects are discussed., Comment: REVTEX (8 pages) and 4 figures (Postscript)

We study quantum diffusion of wavepackets in one-dimensional random binary subject to an applied electric field. We consider three different cases: Periodic, random, and random dimer (paired) lattices. We analyze the spatial extent of electronic wavepackets by means of the time-dependent inverse participatio ratio. We show that the delocalized states recently found in random dimer lattices become spatially localized under the action of the applied field (dynamical localization) but wavepackets are much less localized than in purely random lattices. We conclude that the resonant tunneling effects causing delocalization play an important role even in the presence of the electric field., Comment: 4 pages, REVTeX 3.0 + epsf.sty + multicol.sty, figures in a separate file, submitted to Phys Lett A

We introduce a solvable model of a nonlinear double-barrier structure, described by a generalized effective-mass equation with a nonlinear coupling term. This model is interesting in its own right for possible new applications, as well as to help understand the combined effect of spatial correlations and nonlinearity on disordered systems. Although we specifically discuss the application of the model to electron transport in semiconductor devices, our results apply to other contexts, such as nonlinear optical phenomena. Our model consists of finite width barriers and nonlinearities are dealt with separately in the barriers and in the well, both with and without applied electric fields. We study a wide range of nonlinearity coupling values. When the nonlinear term is only present in the barriers, a sideband is observed in addition to the main resonance and, as a consequence, the current-voltage characteristics present two peaks at different voltages. In this case, the phenomenology remains basically the same through all the considered variation of the parameters. When the well is the component exhibiting nonlinearity, the results depend strongly on the nonlinear coefficient. For small values, the current-voltage characteristics exhibit lower and upper voltage cutoffs. This phenomenon is not present at higher nonlinearities, and eventually linear-like behavior is recovered. We complete this exhaustive study with an analysis of the effects of having simultaneously both kinds of nonlinear couplings. We conclude the paper with a summary of our results, their technological implications, and a prospective discussion of the consequences of our work for more complex systems., Comment: 12 pages, REVTeX 3.0 + epsf, 9 multiple figures (PostScript) Submitted to Phys Rev B

We study disordered quantum-well-based semiconductor superlattices where the disorder is intentional and short-range correlated. Such systems consist of quantum-wells of two different thicknesses randomly distributed along the growth direction, with the additional constraint that wells of one kind always appears in pairs. Imperfections due to interface roughness are considered by allowing the quantum-well thicknesses to fluctuate around their {\em ideal} values. As particular examples, we consider wide-gap (GaAs-Ga$_{1-x}$Al$_{x}$As) and narrow-gap (InAs-GaSb) superlattices. We show the existence of a band of extended states in perfect correlated disordered superlattices, giving rise to a strong enhancement of their finite-temperature dc conductance as compared to usual random ones whenever the Fermi level matches this band. This feature is seen to survive even if interface roughness is taken into account. Our predictions can be used to demonstrate experimentally that structural correlations inhibit the localization effects of disorder, even in the presence of imperfections. This effect might be the basis of new, filter-like or other specific-purpose electronic devices., Comment: REVTeX 3.0, 20 pages, 7 uuencoded compressed PostScript figures as a separate file. Submitted to IEEE J Quantum Elec.