Hél&egra Bouchiat, CNRS, Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Orsay, France
Yuval Gefen, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
Sophie Guéron, Engineering Diploma 1993
D.E.A. de Physique des Solides 1994
Ph.D. Universite Paris VI 1997, Chargee de recherches at CNRS, Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Orsay, France
Gilles Montambaux, Ph.D. Thesis 1985, Universite Paris-Sud, Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Orsay, France
Jean Dalibard, Ph.D., Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, ENS, Paris, France.
Description
The developments of nanofabrication in the past years have enabled the design of electronic systems that exhibit spectacular signatures
of quantum coherence. Nanofabricated quantum wires and dots containing a small number of electrons are ideal experimental playgrounds
for probing electron-electron interactions and their interplay with disorder. Going down to even smaller scales, molecules such as carbon
nanotubes, fullerenes or hydrogen molecules can now be inserted in nanocircuits. Measurements of transport through a single chain of
atoms have been performed as well. Much progress has also been made in the design and fabrication of superconducting and hybrid nanostructures,
be they normal/superconductor or ferromagnetic/superconductor. Quantum coherence is then no longer that of individual electronic states,
but rather that of a superconducting wavefunction of a macroscopic number of Cooper pairs condensed in the same quantum mechanical state.
Beyond the study of linear response regime, the physics of non-equilibrium transport (including non-linear transport, rectification
of a high frequency electric field as well as shot noise) has received much attention, with significant experimental and theoretical
insights. All these quantities exhibit very specific signatures of the quantum nature of transport, which cannot be obtained from basic
conductance measurements.
Basic concepts and analytical tools needed to understand this new physics are presented in a series of theoretical
fundamental courses, in parallel with more phenomenological ones where physics is discussed in a less formal way and illustrated by many
experiments.
Included in series
Les Houches
Audience:
Graduate students and researchers.
