Astley M R, Kataoka M, Ford C J B, Barnes C H W, Anderson D, Jones G A C, Farrer I, Ritchie D A, Pepper M
Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, J.J. Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0HE, United Kingdom.
Phys Rev Lett. 2007 Oct 12;99(15):156802. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.156802. Epub 2007 Oct 10.
We measure the electron escape rate from surface-acoustic-wave dynamic quantum dots (QDs) through a tunnel barrier. Rate equations are used to extract the tunneling rates, which change by an order of magnitude with tunnel-barrier-gate voltage. We find that the tunneling rates depend on the number of electrons in each dynamic QD because of Coulomb energy. By comparing this dependence to a saddle-point-potential model, the addition energies of the second and third electron in each dynamic QD are estimated. The scale ( approximately a few meV) is comparable to those in static QDs as expected.
