Interaction Effects at Crossings of Spin-Polarized One-Dimensional Subbands

Abstract

We report conductance measurements of ballistic one-dimensional (1D) wires defined in GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures in an in-plane magnetic field, B. When the Zeeman energy is equal to the 1D subband energy spacing, the spin-split subband N upward arrow intersects (N+1) downward arrow, where N is the index of the spin-degenerate 1D subband. At the crossing of N=1 upward arrow and N=2 downward arrow subbands, there is a spontaneous splitting giving rise to an additional conductance structure evolving from the 1.5(2e(2)/h) plateau. With further increase in B, the structure develops into a plateau and lowers to 2e(2)/h. With increasing temperature and magnetic field the structure shows characteristics of the 0.7 structure. Our results suggest that at low densities a spontaneous spin splitting occurs whenever two 1D subbands of opposite spins cross.