MICROWAVE-INDUCED RESONANT REFLECTION AND LOCALIZATION OF BALLISTIC ELECTRONS IN QUANTUM MICROCHANNELS

Abstract

We show that electron transport in a ballistic microchannel supporting both propagating and reflected modes can be completely blocked by applying a microwave electromagnetic field. The effect is due to resonant reflection caused by multiple coherent electron-photon scattering involving at least two spatially localized scattering centers in the channel. With many such scattering centers present the conductance is shown to have an irregular dependence on bias voltage, gate voltage and frequency with irregularily spaced dips corresponding to resonant reflection. When averaged over bias, gate voltage or frequency the conductance will decay exponentially with channel length in full analogy with the localization of 1D electrons caused by impurity scattering.