Eccentricity effects on the quantum confinement in double quantum rings

This work presents a theoretical study of the energy spectrum of GaAs/AlGaAs concentric double quantum rings, under an applied magnetic field directed perpendicular to the ring plane. The Schrödinger equation for this system is solved in a realistic model consisting of rings with finite barrier potentials. Numerical results show that increasing the magnetic field intensity leads to oscillations in the ground state energy which, in contrast to the usual Aharonov–Bohm oscillations, do not have a well defined period, due to the coupling between inner and outer ring states. However, when one considers an elliptical geometry for the rings, the energy spectra of the inner and outer ring states are decoupled and the periodicity of the oscillations is recovered.