Transport through a finite one-dimensional crystal

We have studied the magnetotransport properties of an artificial one-dimensional crystal. The crystal consists of a sequence of fifteen quantum dots, defined in the two-dimensional electron gas of a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure by means of a split-gate technique. At a fixed magnetic field of 2 T, two types of oscillations with different amplitude and period are observed in the conductance as a function of gate voltage. A simple model demonstrates that the oscillations arise from the formation of a miniband structure in the periodic crystal, including energy gaps and minibands which contain fifteen discrete states.