title: Four-terminal resistance of a ballistic quantum wire.
abstract: The electrical resistance of a conductor is intimately related to the relaxation of the momentum of charge carriers. In a simple model, the accelerating force exerted on electrons by an applied electric field is balanced by a frictional force arising from their frequent collisions with obstacles such as impurities, grain boundaries or other deviations from a perfect crystalline order. Thus, in the absence of any scattering, the electrical resistance should vanish altogether. Here, we observe such vanishing four-terminal resistance in a single-mode ballistic quantum wire. This result contrasts the value of the standard two-probe resistance measurements of h/2e2 approximately 13 kOmega. The measurements are conducted in the highly controlled geometry afforded by epitaxial growth onto the cleaved edge of a high-quality GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure. Two weakly invasive voltage probes are attached to the central section of a ballistic quantum wire to measure the inherent resistance of this clean one-dimensional conductor.
authors.affiliation: Bell-Labs, Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974, USA. rd25@lucent.com
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: de Picciotto
authors.forename: H L
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Stormer
authors.forename: L N
authors.initials: LN
authors.lastname: Pfeiffer
authors.forename: K W
authors.initials: KW
authors.lastname: Baldwin
authors.forename: K W
authors.initials: KW
authors.lastname: West