Band-edge properties of quasi-one-dimensional HgTe-CdTe heterostructures

Abstract
We discuss a number of potential advantages offered by materials with very narrow energy gaps in the study of quasi-one-dimensional physics. Besides the expectation of quite large subband splittings, we predict several new phenomena which have no analog in wide-gap structures, such as the opening of a confinement-induced energy gap in semimetallic structures, a strong decrease of the gap with magnetic field, and ballistic conductance per channel in fractional units of c2/πħ.