Optically induced Aharonov-Bohm effect in mesoscopic rings

We show theoretically that strong electron coupling to circularly polarized photons in non-singly-connected nanostructures results in the appearance of an artificial gauge field that changes the electron phase. The effect arises from the breaking of time-reversal symmetry and is analogous to the wel...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Sigurdsson, H., Kibis, O. V., Shelykh, Ivan
Other Authors: School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/103622
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/24550
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
Description
Summary:We show theoretically that strong electron coupling to circularly polarized photons in non-singly-connected nanostructures results in the appearance of an artificial gauge field that changes the electron phase. The effect arises from the breaking of time-reversal symmetry and is analogous to the well-known Aharonov-Bohm phase effect. It can manifest itself in the oscillations of conductance as a function of the intensity and frequency of the illumination. The theory of the effect is elaborated for mesoscopic rings in both ballistic and diffusive regimes.