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In mesoscopic and nanoscale systems at low temperatures, charge carriers are typically not in thermal equilibrium with the surrounding lattice. The resulting, non-equilibrium dynamics of electrons has only begun to be explored.…
We investigate bias-driven non-equilibrium quantum phase transitions in a paradigmatic quantum-transport setup: an interacting quantum dot coupled to non-interacting metallic leads. Using the Random Phase Approximation, which is exact in…
We report on electrical resistance measurements of an individual carbon nanotube down to a temperature T=20 mK. The conductance exhibits a ln T dependence and saturates at low temperature. A magnetic field applied perpendicular to the tube…
This lecture note reviews a variety of transport and thermodynamic measurements of electron decoherence time in low-dimensional conductors at low temperature. The mechanism of dephasing by electron interaction mediated by an arbitrarily…
A good understanding of the electronic conduction processes through nanocontacts is a crucial step for the implementation of functional nanoelectronic devices. We have studied the current-voltage ($I$-$V$) characteristics of nanocontacts…
A quantum dot is a sub-micron-scale conducting device containing up to several thousand electrons. Transport through a quantum dot at low temperatures is a quantum-coherent process. This review focuses on dots in which the electron's…
We analyze the short-time behavior of the heat and charge currents through nanoscale conductors exposed to a temperature gradient. To this end, we employ Luttinger's thermomechanical potential to simulate a sudden change of temperature at…
Quantum fluctuations of Coulomb blockade are investigated as a function of the coupling to reservoirs in semiconductor quantum dots. We use fluctuations in the distance between peaks $\Delta N$ apart to characterize both the amplitude and…
The effect of quantum fluctuations on the current-voltage characteristics of Josephson junctions and superconducting nanowires is studied in the underdamped limit. Quantum fluctuations induce transitions between a Coulomb--blockade and a…
To develop next-generation electronics and high efficiency energy-harvesting devices, it is crucial to understand how charge and heat are transported at the nanoscale. Metallic atomic-size contacts are ideal systems to probe the quantum…
We calculate the counting statistics of electron transfer through an open quantum dot with charging interaction. A dot that is connected to leads by two single-channel quantum point contacts in an in-plane magnetic field is described by a…
Conduction of electrons in matter is ultimately described by quantum mechanics. Yet at low frequency or long time scales, low temperature quantum transport is perfectly described by this very simple idea: electrons are emitted by the…
We study the combined effect of thermal and quantum fluctuations in a zero dimensional superconductor. By using path integral techniques, we obtain novel expressions for the partition function and the superconducting order parameter which…
We analyse in detail Mott's variable range hopping in one dimension, expanding on earlier work by Raikh and Ruzin. We show that the large conductance fluctuations in disordered insulators result from a subtle interplay between purely…
We present results from an extensive study of fluctuation phenomena in superconducting nanowires made from sputtered NbN. Nanoscale wires were fabricated in form of a meander and operated at a constant temperature T~0.4Tc(0). The…
The appealing feature of molecular electronics is the possibility of exploiting functionality built within a single molecule. This functionality can be employed, for example, for sensing or switching purposes. Thus, ideally, the associated…
Quantum phase transitions are among the most intriguing phenomena that can occur when the electronic ground state of correlated metals are tuned by external parameters such as pressure, magnetic field or chemical substitution. Such…
We investigate quantum fluctuations in thin superconducting wires. We demonstrate that quantum phase slips dominate the system behavior at low temperatures and are well in the measurable range for sufficiently thin wires. We discuss the…
We consider a model for a metal-insulator transition of correlated electrons in an external magnetic field. We find a broad region in interaction and magnetic field where metallic and insulating (fully magnetized) solutions coexist and the…
The transport properties of nanostructured systems are deeply affected by the geometry of the effective connections to metallic leads. In this work we derive a conductance expression for interacting systems whose connectivity geometries do…