Zitterbewegung of Electron Motion in Semiconductors

Abstract

Progress in semiconductor nano-fabrication technique has enabled us to observe in solids not only elementary quantum mechanical phenomena like the Aharonov-Bohm effect or the quantum tunneling effect, but also undiscovered particles or phenomena in particle physics. As a matter of practice, it is impossible to observe the trembling motion of relativistic electrons, which phenomenon called Zitterbewegung (ZB). However, the observation of ZB as a solid-state phenomenon has been seriously considered. Various types of ZB have been predicted, one of which is the meandering motion of electrons in quantum wells with the Rashba-type spin-orbit interaction. In the present study, we have observed ZB in an InAs quantum well as a conductance fluctuation in a spin-polarized semi-ballistic transport provided by quantum point contact electrodes.