Decoherence and adiabatic transport in semiconductor quantum dots

I present research on ballistic electron transport in lateral GaAs/AlGaAs quantum dots connected to the environment with leads supporting one or more fully transmitting quantum modes. The first part of this dissertation examines electron the phenomena which mediate the transition from quantum mechanical to classical behavior in these quantum dots. Measurements of electron phase coherence time based on the magnitude of weak localization correction are presented as a function both of temperature and of applied bias. The coherence time is found to depend on temperature approximately as a sum of two power laws, τ_&phis; ≈ AT−1 + BT−2, in agreement with the prediction for diffusive two dimensional systems but not with predictions for closed quantum dots or ballistic 2D systems. The effects of a large applied bias can be described with an elevated effective electron temperature calculated from the balance of Joule heating and cooling by Wiedemann-Franz out diffusion of hot electrons. The limits this imposes for quantum dot based technologies are examined through the detailed analysis of a quantum dot magnetometer.; The second part of the work presented here focuses on a novel form of electron transport, adiabatic quantum electron pumping, in which a current is driven by cyclic changes in the wave function of a mesoscopic system rather than by an externally imposed bias. After a brief review of other mechanisms which produce a dc current from an ac excitation, measurements of adiabatic pumping are presented. The pumped current (or voltage) is sinusoidal in the phase difference between the two ac voltages deforming the dot potential and fluctuates in both magnitude and direction with small changes in external parameters such as magnetic field. Dependencies of pumping on the strength of the deformations, temperature, and breaking of time-reversal symmetry are also investigated.