Wednesday, May 21

8:30 AM-9:30 AM
Chair: Boris L. Altshuler, NEC Research, Inc.
Ballroom I, II, III - Level B

IP8
Small Electronics and Quantum Chaos

The transport properties of electronic devices below the few-micrometer scale show signatures of quantum interference and quantum confinement when the devices are cooled near absolute zero. This talk will summarize recent experiments measuring random (but perfectly repeatable) fluctuations in conductance of these structures - known as quantum dots - and the connection between the universal statistical properties of these fluctuations and the universal spectral statistics of random matrix theory and quantum manifestations of chaos.

There has been great progress in this field in the last few years, and the behavior of quantum-coherent electrons is now well in hand, with good agreement between theory and experiment. This success story applies when the unavoidable coupling of electrons to the environment and each other is small. The great outstanding problems in the field concern the the inclusion of interactions and decoherence. Some of these issues - somewhat less of a success story - will also be discussed.

Charles M. Marcus
Department of Physics, Stanford University

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TMP, 4/4/97 TJF, 4/15/97