McGill.CA / Science / Department of Physics

CPM Seminar

Electron Scrambling in Ballistic and Diffusive Quantum Dots

Philippe Jacquod

Leiden University

When electrons are added to a quantum dot in the Coulomb blockade regime, several features which depend on the nature of the underlying wavefunctions are modified, as the latter are intermixed. One talks then of electron scrambling. This is due to electron-electron interactions. I will investigate the scrambling induced by the addition of electrons on the single-particle wave functions in a self-consistant Hartree-Fock scheme and for both ballistic and diffusive dots. I will show that the scrambling rate strongly depends on the boundary conditions in both cases. In particular, hard-wall boundary condition allow the accumulation of surface charges which result in increased fluctuations and stronger mixing of the wavefunctions. I will discuss the relevance of these results for Coulomb blockade tunneling experiments.

Wednesday, October 31st 2001, 16:00
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, room 115