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Science 17 December 1999:
Vol. 286. no. 5448, pp. 2314 - 2317
DOI: 10.1126/science.286.5448.2314
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Reports

Experimental Tunneling Ratchets

H. Linke, 1* T. E. Humphrey, 1 A. Löfgren, 2 A. O. Sushkov, 1 R. Newbury, 1 R. P. Taylor, 1 P. Omling 2

Adiabatically rocked electron ratchets, defined by quantum confinement in semiconductor heterostructures, were experimentally studied in a regime where tunneling contributed to the particle flow. The rocking-induced electron flow reverses direction as a function of temperature. This result confirms a recent prediction of fundamentally different behavior of classical versus quantum ratchets. A wave-mechanical model reproduced the temperature-induced current reversal and provides an intuitive explanation.

1 School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia.
2 Division of Solid State Physics, Lund University, Box 118, 221 00 Lund, Sweden.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: hl{at}phys.unsw.edu.au

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)