Soliton Tunneling Transistor

Abstract

We report on a macroscopic version of the single-electron transistor (SET), which we call the soliton tunneling transistor (STT). The STT, consists of a gate capacitor coupled to a NbSe$_{3}$ crystal with a charge density wave (CDW). The current-voltage characteristic of an STT is periodically modulated by the gate voltage, as in the SET,except that the periodicity corresponds to a macroscopic displacement charge. These results appear to be consistent with time- correlated quantum nucleation of solitons and antisolitons [see Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 84}, 1555 (2000)]. We discuss how the microscopic degrees of freedom within the condensate might enable quantum behavior at high temperatures, and report on preliminary modeling studies using a coupled-phase Hamiltonian to interpret our results.