Unveiling the bosonic nature of an ultrashort few-electron pulse

Roussely, G. et al. (2018) Unveiling the bosonic nature of an ultrashort few-electron pulse. Nature Communications, 9, 2811. (doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-05203-7) (PMID:30022067) (PMCID:PMC6052057)

Abstract

Quantum dynamics is very sensitive to dimensionality. While two-dimensional electronic systems form Fermi liquids, one-dimensional systems—Tomonaga–Luttinger liquids—are described by purely bosonic excitations, even though they are initially made of fermions. With the advent of coherent single-electron sources, the quantum dynamics of such a liquid is now accessible at the single-electron level. Here, we report on time-of-flight measurements of ultrashort few-electron charge pulses injected into a quasi one-dimensional quantum conductor. By changing the confinement potential we can tune the system from the one-dimensional Tomonaga–Luttinger liquid limit to the multi-channel Fermi liquid and show that the plasmon velocity can be varied over almost an order of magnitude. These results are in quantitative agreement with a parameter-free theory and demonstrate a powerful probe for directly investigating real-time dynamics of fractionalisation phenomena in low-dimensional conductors.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Georgiou, Dr Giorgos
• Authors: Roussely, G., Arrighi, E., Georgiou, G., Takada, S., Schalk, M., Urdampilleta, M., Ludwig, A., Wieck, A. D., Armagnat, P., Kloss, T., Waintal, X., Meunier, T., and Bäuerle, C.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Electronics and Nanoscale Engineering
• Journal Name: Nature Communications
• Publisher: Nature Research
• ISSN: 2041-1723
• ISSN (Online): 2041-1723
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2018 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Nature Communications 9: 2811
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License