Semiclassical transport in nearly symmetric quantum dots. II. Symmetry breaking due to asymmetric leads

Robert S. Whitney, Henning Schomerus, and Marten Kopp
Phys. Rev. E 80, 056210 – Published 23 November 2009

Abstract

In this work—the second of a pair of articles—we consider transport through spatially symmetric quantum dots with leads whose widths or positions do not obey the spatial symmetry. We use the semiclassical theory of transport to find the symmetry-induced contributions to weak localization corrections and universal conductance fluctuations for dots with left-right, up-down, inversion, and fourfold symmetries. We show that all these contributions are suppressed by asymmetric leads; however, they remain finite whenever leads intersect with their images under the symmetry operation. For an up-down symmetric dot, this means that the contributions can be finite even if one of the leads is completely asymmetric. We find that the suppression of the contributions to universal conductance fluctuations is the square of the suppression of contributions to weak localization. Finally, we develop a random-matrix theory model which enables us to numerically confirm these results.

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  • Received 4 June 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.80.056210

©2009 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Robert S. Whitney1, Henning Schomerus2, and Marten Kopp2

  • 1Institut Laue-Langevin, 6 rue Jules Horowitz, BP 156, 38042 Grenoble, France
  • 2Department of Physics, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YB, United Kingdom

See Also

Semiclassical transport in nearly symmetric quantum dots. I. Symmetry breaking in the dot

Robert S. Whitney, Henning Schomerus, and Marten Kopp
Phys. Rev. E 80, 056209 (2009)

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Vol. 80, Iss. 5 — November 2009

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