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Mesoscopic Electron Transport pp 549–579Cite as

Quantum Point Contacts Between Metals

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Part of the book series: NATO ASI Series ((NSSE,volume 345))

Abstract

In the chapter by Kouwenhoven, Schön and Sohn, the phenomenon of quantization of the conductance is introduced. The phenomenon is a consequence of the wave nature of the charge carriers. In a conductor for which the width is not very much larger than the Fermi wavelength, it is useful to describe the conductance, G, in terms of the Landauer-Büttiker expression

$$G = \frac{{2{e^2}}}{h}\sum\limits_n {{T_n}} $$
(1)

where the T n describe the transmission probability for each of the modes at the entrance of the conductor and the sum runs over all occupied modes. If we can contrive our experiment in such a way that the T n are equal to 1, up to a mode number N, and equal to zero for all other modes, then the conductance assumes values which are an integer times the quantum unit of conductance, G0 = 2e2/h. It turns out to be possible to fabricate conductors which have precisely this property, as was beautifully demonstrated in the seminal experiments by van Wees et al. [1] and Wharam et al. [2] on a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) semiconductor device.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratorium, Leiden University, Box 9506, NL-2300, RA Leiden, The Netherlands

    J. M. van Ruitenbeek

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, USA

    Lydia L. Sohn

  2. Department of Applied Physics and DIMES, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Leo P. Kouwenhoven

  3. Institut für Theoretische Festkörperphysik, Universität Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Gerd Schön

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van Ruitenbeek, J.M. (1997). Quantum Point Contacts Between Metals. In: Sohn, L.L., Kouwenhoven, L.P., Schön, G. (eds) Mesoscopic Electron Transport. NATO ASI Series, vol 345. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8839-3_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8839-3_15

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