Scenario for the 0.7-conductance anomaly in quantum point contacts

Effects of spontaneous spin polarization in quantum point contacts (QPC's) are investigated for a realistic semiconductor device structure using the Kohn-Sham local spin-density formalism. At maximal polarization in the contact area, there is a bifurcation into ground-state and metastable solutions. The conduction associated with the metastability is lower than for the normal state. With increasing temperature, the conductance should therefore show an anomalous behavior as observed. For the present device we do not recover resonance or quasibound states.