Electronic Quantum Transport in Mesoscopic Semiconductor Structures: (192 Springer Tracts in Modern Physics)

The physics of semiconductors has seen an enormous evolution within the last ?fty years. Countless achievements have been made in scienti?c research and device applications have revolutionized everyday life. We have learned how to customize materials in order to tailor their optical as well as electronic properties. The on- ing trend toward device miniaturization has been the driving force on the appli- tion side and it has fertilized fundamental research. Nowadays, advanced processing techniques allow the fabrication of sub-micron semiconductor structures in many university research laboratories. At the same time, experiments down to millikelvin temperatures allow researchers to anticipate the observation of quantum phenomena, so far hidden at room temperature by the large thermal energy and strong dephasing. The ?eld of mesoscopic physics deals with systems under experimental con- tions where several quantum length scales for electrons such as system size and phase coherence length, or phase coherence length and elastic mean free path, are compa- ble. Intense research over the last twenty years has revealed an enormous richness of quantum effects in mesoscopic semiconductor physics, which is typically charact- ized by an interplay of quantum interference and many-body interactions. The most famous phenomena are probably the integer and fractional quantum Hall effects, the quantization of conductance through a quantum point contact, the Aharonov–Bohm effect, and single-electron charging of quantum dots.

Table of Contents:
to Electron Transport.- Electrical conductance: Historical account from Ohm to the semiclassical Drude-Boltzmann theory.- Toward the microscopic understanding of conductance on a quantum mechanical basis.- Conductance in Strongly Interacting and Disordered Two-Dimensional Systems.- The concept of metals and insulators.- Scaling theory of localization.- Electron-electron interactions within the Fermi-liquid concept.- Beyond Fermi-liquid theory.- Summary of disorder and interaction effects.- Experiments on strongly interacting two-dimensional systems and the metal-insulator transition.- Theoretical work related to the metal-insulator transition.- Metallic behavior in p-SiGe quantum wells.- Electron Transport through Quantum Dots and Quantum Rings.- to electron transport through quantum dots.- Energy spectra of quantum rings.- Spin filling in quantum dots.- Local Spectroscopy of Semiconductor Nanostructures.- Instrumentation: Scanning force microscopes for cryogenic temperatures and magnetic fields.- Local investigation of a two-dimensional electron gas with an SFM at cryogenic temperatures.- Local investigation of edge channels.- Scanning gate measurements on a quantum wire.