Screening, nonadiabaticity, and quantized acoustoelectric current

Abstract

Quantized single-electron transport driven by surface acoustic waves (SAW) through a pinched-off narrow constriction is studied theoretically. Long-range Coulomb interaction causes the tunneling coupling between the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) and the moving minimum of the SAW-induced potential to decay rapidly with time. The energy scale, associated with the characteristic time of this decay, controls both the width of the transition regions between the plateaus and the slope of the plateaus. This sets a limit for the accuracy of the quantization of acoustoelectric current at low temperature.