Eur. Phys. J. B 52, 389-396 (2006)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2006-00295-5

Microwave control of directed transport in asymmetric antidot structures

École Normale Supérieure, 45, rue d'Ulm, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France

Corresponding author: ^a alexei.chepelianskii@ens.fr

Received: 7 May 2006
Published online: 31 July 2006

Abstract

It is shown that a polarized microwave radiation creates directed transport in an asymmetric antidot superlattice in two dimensional electron gas. A numerical method is developed that allows to establish the dependence of this ratchet effect on several parameters relevant for real experimental studies. It is applied to the concrete case of a semidisk Galton board where the electron dynamics is chaotic in the absence of microwave driving. The obtained results show that strong currents can be reached at a relatively low microwave power. This effect opens new possibilities for microwave control of transport in asymmetric superlattices.