ONE-DIMENSIONAL TO ONE-DIMENSIONAL TUNNELING BETWEEN ELECTRON WAVE-GUIDES

We report the observation of controlled electron tunnelling between tw o closely spaced one-dimensional (1D) electron waveguides implemented using a split-gate scheme on a high mobility AlGaAs/GaAs heterostructu re. The 1D to 1D tunnelling current shows a distinct bumpy pattern whe n the electronic subband population in the two waveguides is modulated . These results are consistent with a picture in which tunnelling prim arily occurs when the 1D subbands in both waveguides line up in energy as expected from energy and momentum conservation rules.