Effects of an in-plane magnetic field on the energy dispersion, spin texturing and conductance of double quantum wires

• The energy dispersion and conductance of double quantum wire are investigated.
• The wire system is represented by a double quartic-well confinement potential.
• The potential profile, magnetic field and spin-orbit interaction are parameters.
• These parameters modify significantly the energy spectrum and conductivity.
• Spin texturing is strongly dependent on the aforementioned parameters.

We investigate the electronic structure, spin and transport properties of double quantum wires formed by a symmetric, double quartic-well potential subjected to an in-plane magnetic field by taking into account Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit couplings. The energy dispersion relation of the system is analyzed for different strengths of spin-orbit interactions, magnitude and direction of magnetic field. Our numerical results reveal that the existence of aforementioned parameters modifies strongly the energy band structure, introduces a wave vector dependence to energies and also leads to crossings and anticrossings between subbands. This complex structure of energy dispersion gives rise to the appearance of square-wave like oscillations in the conductance. The spin-orbit couplings, magnetic field, potential profile and Fermi energy of an electron significantly affect the depth and width of conductance steps. Moreover, we found that the competing effect between spin-orbit couplings and magnetic field leaves its marks on the spin texturing.