TY - JOUR

T1 - Inelastic electron Backscattering in a generic helical edge channel

AU - Schmidt, Thomas

AU - Rachel, Stephan

AU - von Oppen, Felix

AU - Glazman, Leonid

N1 - © 2012 American Physical Society

PY - 2012/4/11

Y1 - 2012/4/11

N2 - We evaluate the low-temperature conductance of a weakly interacting one-dimensional helical liquid without axial spin symmetry. The lack of that symmetry allows for inelastic backscattering of a single electron, accompanied by forward scattering of another. This joint effect of weak interactions and potential scattering off impurities results in a temperature-dependent deviation from the quantized conductance, delta G proportional to T-4. In addition, delta G is sensitive to the position of the Fermi level. We determine numerically the parameters entering our generic model for the Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang Hamiltonian of a HgTe/CdTe quantum well in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling.

AB - We evaluate the low-temperature conductance of a weakly interacting one-dimensional helical liquid without axial spin symmetry. The lack of that symmetry allows for inelastic backscattering of a single electron, accompanied by forward scattering of another. This joint effect of weak interactions and potential scattering off impurities results in a temperature-dependent deviation from the quantized conductance, delta G proportional to T-4. In addition, delta G is sensitive to the position of the Fermi level. We determine numerically the parameters entering our generic model for the Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang Hamiltonian of a HgTe/CdTe quantum well in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84859796822&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.156402

DO - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.156402

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:84859796822

VL - 108

JO - Physical review letters

JF - Physical review letters

SN - 0031-9007

IS - 15

M1 - 156402

ER -