Magnetic-field asymmetry of mesoscopic dc rectification in Aharonov-Bohm rings

Fundamental Casimir-Onsager symmetry rules for linear response do not apply to nonlinear transport. This motivates the investigation of nonlinear dc conductance of mesoscopic GaAs/GaAlAs rings in a two-wire configuration. The second-order current response to a potential bias is of particular interest. It is related to the sensitivity of conductance fluctuations to this bias and contains information on electron interactions not included in the linear response. In contrast with the linear response, which is a symmetric function of magnetic field, we find that this second-order response exhibits a field dependence, which contains an antisymmetric part. We analyze the flux periodic and aperiodic components of this asymmetry and find that they only depend on the conductance of the rings, which is varied by more than an order of magnitude. These results are in good agreement with recent theoretical predictions relating this asymmetric response to the electron interactions.