Energy bands, conductance, and thermoelectric power for ballistic electrons in a nanowire with spin-orbit interaction

We calculated the effects of spin-orbit interaction on the energy bands, ballistic conductance (G), and the electron-diffusion thermoelectric power (S-d) of a nanowire by varying the temperature, electron density, and width of the wire. The potential barriers at the edges of the wire are assumed to be very high. A consequence of the boundary conditions used in this model is determined by the energy band structure, resulting in wider plateaus when the electron density is increased due to larger energy-level separation as the higher subbands are occupied by electrons. The nonlinear dependence of the transverse confinement on position with respect to the well center excludes the "polelike feature" in G which is obtained when a harmonic potential is employed for confinement. At low temperature, S-d increases linearly with T but deviates from the linear behavior for large values of T. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3493113]