Experiments on Aharonov–Bohm conductance oscillations: a statistical analysis of the averaged Fourier spectrum

We study the shape of the Fourier spectrum of Aharonov–Bohm conductance oscillations measured in a 2D ring in the presence of Rashba spin–orbit interaction. As expected, the shape of the Fourier spectrum of any single measurement is dominated by sample specific effects. This impedes the observation of possible effects due to the electron spin. We show in detail how the analysis of the ensemble averaged Fourier spectrum permits to reduce sample specific features and how to quantify this reduction in a well-defined statistical way. We find that in the averaged Fourier spectrum a structure appears which is not due to sample specific effects.