Coulomb oscillations of the conductance in a laterally confined heterostructure

The authors predict a new type of conductance oscillations in a GaAs heterostructure with a proposed strip-like gate with a hole. Such a gate defines a conducting dot (under the hole) in an otherwise depleted region of a two-dimensional electron gas. The oscillations are caused by discrete changes of the charge of the dot as the gate voltage is varied. They show that for low temperatures, Tdistinct feature of the predicted oscillations (in comparison with the quantum ballistic interference phenomena) is the weak dependence on magnetic field and carrier scattering.