The effect of a local perturbation in a fermionic ladder

Abstract

We study the effect of a local external potential on a system of two parallel spin-polarized nanowires placed close to each other. For single channel nanowires with repulsive interaction we find that transport properties of the system are highly sensitive to the transverse gradient of the perturbation: the asymmetric part completely reflects the electrons leading to vanishing conductance at zero temperature, while the flat potential remains transparent. We envisage a possible application of this unusual property in the sensitive measurement of local potential field gradients.