Artificial Electronic Lattices in a Magnetic Field

Abstract

With the advances in nanoscale technologies, experiments of well-known phenomena in quantum mechanics have swiftly become accessible. The technology of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) allows it to obtain atomic resolution and to manipulate atoms, enabling the design and construction of quantum simulators. Here, an electronic quantum simulator was created in the STM by confining the surface state of Cu(111) with CO molecules as repulsive scatterers. An experiment was conducted constructing artificial atomic sites in a quantum corral and in molecular graphene. The aim of this thesis is to study the effect of a perpendicular magnetic field on these electronic lattices. Results show a small shift in energy of the electronic states with an applied magnetic field of up to 4 T. A characteristic pattern was obtained when the differential conductance spectra taken at 1, 2, 3, 4 T were subtracted from the 0 T spectrum. Furthermore, muffn tin calculations were performed and compared with the experiments. The theoretical calculations corroborate the experimental findings as also the peaks in the distinct subtraction pattern matched. The magnetic flux in the experiments was too low to observe splitting into Landau levels or the integer Quantum Hall effect. Overall, the measurements performed here with a magnetic field show a new pathway to explore more magnetic quantum effects.