Mailman 3 December 2018 - Kwant-discuss

Gate-defined Nanowire Quantum Dot
by Jonathan Fields 15 Sep '22

15 Sep '22

Dear Reader, I am new to KWANT and trying to figure out if it is suitable for calculating transport properties of gate-defined quantum dots made out of nanowires, along the lines of the structure used in https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0609463. Now, I understand that the mailing list is not a place to ask people to do my work for me, and my question is also not for someone to do this. What I am looking for is some insights into if this is possible (and not all that difficult) with the package. At first sight (and going through the tutorials as well as the APS March Meeting material) this does not seem straightforward; what I struggle with is how to define this type of dot in KWANT. Now, one way would of course be to built the entire 3D geometry of the system, but this will be computationally expensive, and probably also rather tricky to do in terms of defining everything, from the hexagonal wire itself to all of the gates and oxide layers and such. Some abstraction would be preferred, perhaps even reducing the dimensionality and making a 2D system, such as often done in the tutorial. Is this a good idea? My problem is that if one does this, then I run into the problem of how to model the 'half wrap-around' type gates typically used in these devices. In the transport through barrier section of the APS March Meeting material there is a section on how to model realistic potentials, but this would not work all that well for these wrap around type gates. On the other hand, in a way they are perhaps not so different from the QPC in that section. One could model the three gates as something like https://i.imgur.com/WZC983c.png as they do essentially form channels in the wire. Apart from if this sacrifices too much of the nanowire nature in favor of a 2DEG system, I do suppose such a system should in principle be able to be treated as a quantum dot. I haven't been able to confirm this as I am not yet sure how one can apply a source-drain voltage in KWANT; I first thought that this would probably be related to the energy of the modes, but then again I have not been able to produce Coulomb diamonds in this way. The question is getting rather lenghty, and also a bit unclear at this point. Perhaps I should finish up by stating it in a concise form; would you think that it is possible to simulate the transport of such a gate defined nanowire quantum dot device with KWANT, and if so, is the approach I am suggesting above a viable one, or would you go about it very differently? Kind regards Jonathan <http://aka.ms/weboutlook>

4 4

How the spin is positioned in the Smatrix?
by Qingtian Zhang 06 Mar '22

06 Mar '22

Dear all, I am trying square lattice with spin-orbit coupling and Zeeman splititng just like the example of Tutorial 2.3.1. Now I want to get the spin-dependent conductance：Guu,Gud,Gdu,and Gdd, where "u" indicates up spin, d indicates down spin. We can have the scattering matrix through Smatrix=kwant.smatrix(sys, energy), but how the spin is positioned in the scattering matrix? I have checked some simple cases, it seems the Smatrix is organized like this: | r t | S= | t' r' | but how the spin is included? Thanks in advance. Qingtiian Zhang The code is: import kwant from matplotlib import pyplot from numpy import matrix import tinyarray sigma_0 = tinyarray.array([[1, 0], [0, 1]]) sigma_x = tinyarray.array([[0, 1], [1, 0]]) sigma_y = tinyarray.array([[0, -1j], [1j, 0]]) sigma_z = tinyarray.array([[1, 0], [0, -1]]) sys=kwant.Builder() lat=kwant.lattice.square() a=1 t=1.0 alpha=0.5 e_z=0.08 W=2 L=2 sys[(lat(x, y) for x in range(L) for y in range(W))] = \ 4 * t * sigma_0 + e_z * sigma_z # hoppings in x-direction sys[kwant.builder.HoppingKind((1, 0), lat, lat)] = \ -t * sigma_0 - 1j * alpha * sigma_y # hoppings in y-directions sys[kwant.builder.HoppingKind((0, 1), lat, lat)] = \ -t * sigma_0 + 1j * alpha * sigma_x #### Define the left lead. #### lead = kwant.Builder(kwant.TranslationalSymmetry((-a, 0))) lead[(lat(0, j) for j in xrange(W))] = 4 * t * sigma_0 + e_z * sigma_z # hoppings in x-direction lead[kwant.builder.HoppingKind((1, 0), lat, lat)] = \ -t * sigma_0 - 1j * alpha * sigma_y # hoppings in y-directions lead[kwant.builder.HoppingKind((0, 1), lat, lat)] = \ -t * sigma_0 + 1j * alpha * sigma_x #### Attach the leads and return the finalized system. #### sys.attach_lead(lead) sys.attach_lead(lead.reversed()) kwant.plot(sys) sys=sys.finalized() print "Hamiltonian=" print sys.hamiltonian_submatrix() Smatrix=kwant.smatrix(sys, energy=3.) print "The scattering matrix=" print matrix.round((Smatrix.data),2) print "T=",(Smatrix.transmission(1, 0))

3 3

Spin polarized transport calculation
by L.M J 06 Mar '22

06 Mar '22

Dear Kwant users and developers I have two questions related to the spin calculation using kwant. 1. I'm wondering if we can do spin-polarized transport in kwant? For example, can we can get the separate Conductance Vs Energy diagram for spin up and spin down terms. I'm thinking one way of doing this is to set up the Rashba Hamiltonian as a whole. And then manually extract the spin up and spin down hamiltonian and do the transport calculation separately. But this will eliminate some extra terms that I don't know whether this is correct anymore. Any suggestions? 2. How can we set up the spin polarization for a particular site? For example, in some of the topological insulator, can we set up spin polarization on the edge as up and the other side of the edge as down, and then do the transport? Or this question is completely wrong? Thanks for advance. Sincerely, Liming

3 3

How to caculate hall resistance
by ZHANG Bing 12 Sep '21

12 Sep '21

Dear Sir, I am a PhD student of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. I want to use KWANT to caculate Hall resistance of a Hall bar structure.We can get the conductance between 6 electrodes, but how to get hall resistance? Can you give me some help? Thank you very much. Best Regards, Zhang Bing

4 3

Install Kwant on Win 10
by Zhanzhi 04 Jan '19

04 Jan '19

Hi, I am trying to install Kwant on a Win 10 PC. I followed the steps https://kwant-project.org/install but cannot finish the final step successfully. The command window says “no module named pip” after I execute python -c "import pip, glob; pip.main(['install', '--no-deps'] + glob.glob('*.whl'))" and “python3 is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file” after I execute python3 -c "import pip, glob; pip.main(['install', '--no-deps'] + glob.glob('*.whl'))" What is the possible problem? Best, Zhanzhi Sent from Mail for Windows 10

3 3

complex conjugate operator
by 张金龙 07 Dec '18

07 Dec '18

Dear developer of Kwant： I'm a freshman of Kwant. Recently, I want to calculate the conductance of Superconductor junction. Let me take the p+ip topological superconductor as the example. Its Hamiltonian is like with \sigma, \tau is the Pauli matrix for spin and particle-hole. It have particle-hole symmetry: to guarantee . ************************** My question is how to write down the K (complex conjugate) operator? Jinlong Zhang

2 1

Drawing edge states in zGNR (using tutorial 2.8)
by Elmo Reubke 07 Dec '18

07 Dec '18

Dear all, Having gone through the tutorials (up to Plotting Kwant Systems and Data in Various Styles), I am a bit stuck adapting that tutorial and the ones it builds upon to draw a simple zigzag nanoribbon, with the hopping shown and the probability densities shown using circles corresponding to the amplitude (trying to show that the edge state decays into the bulk). The tutorial (and most of the graphene themed tutorials preceding it) always use a circle as the scattering region and then build a quantum dot, add some leads... etc. Is there a simple example out there showing how I can build a zigzag nanoribbon, just using nearest neighbour hopping, and extract the wavefunction and draw said nanoribbon exactly like the figure at the end of the 2D part of that tutorial. Thanks, Elmo.

2 1

semicon
by Ali Asgharpour 05 Dec '18

05 Dec '18

Hello I want to find conductance of a heterostructure using semicon library. When I just use coords='z', everything is OK. But, when I want to change it to two dimensions like 'xz', I encounter an error. Would you please tell me how I can fix it? I hope it is not just a simple mistake which I am not aware. Your time and consideration are greatly appreciated in advance. Please find attached the code correspondent to what I mentioned above. Best regards, Ali

3 8