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S. Rotter:
"Lecture series on "Transport through nanostructures in the quantum-to-classical crossover"";
Talk: XXIV Heidelberg Physics Graduate Days, Heidelberg, Germany (invited); 2010-04-06 - 2010-04-09.

The transport of electrons through a conductor is a central research issue at the crossroads between solid-state physics, electrical engineering and chaos theory. Due to the ongoing miniaturization of conductors the phase-coherence of electrons in the transport process is nowadays becoming increasingly important and is being explored as a resource for designing conceptually new devices. In this so-called "mesoscopic regime" of transport both experimental and theoretical progress have recently led to the discovery of a whole host of interesting phenomena.

In this lecture series the fundamental concepts of transport on the nano-scale will be presented. A particular emphasis will be put on transport through low-dimensional semiconductors, where basic notions of quantum mechanics are brought to life. We will show how the low-temperature conductance through such devices can be understood as a scattering problem to which insights from the field of "quantum chaos" can be successfully applied. After an introduction to these concepts, a selection of modern experiments will be discussed to provide an overview of the state-of-the-art in the field. The course requires a working knowledge of quantum mechanics and solid state theory from the standard physics curriculum.