Related papers: Conductance Quantization and Electron Resonances i…
Recent experiments on atomic-scale metallic contacts have shown that the quantization of the conductance appears clearly only after the average of the experimental results. Motivated by these results we have analyzed a simplified model…
The conductance through a quantum point contact created by a sharp and hard metal tip on the graphite surface has features which to our knowledge have not been encountered so far in metal contacts or in nanowires. In this paper we first…
Using the recursive Green's function technique, we study the coherent electron conductance of a quantum point contact in the presence of a scanning probe microscope tip. Images of the coherent fringe inside a quantum point contact for…
Electrical conductance through various nanocontacts between gold electrodes is studied by using the density functional theory, scalar-relativistic pseudopotentials, generalized gradient approximation for the exchange-correlation energy and…
Atomic-sized lead (Pb) contacts are deposited and dissolved in an electrochemical environment, and their transport properties are measured. Due to the electrochemical fabrication process, we obtain mechanically unstrained contacts and…
With the goal to elucidate the nature of spin-dependent electronic transport in ferromagnetic atomic contacts, we present here a combined experimental and theoretical study of the conductance and shot noise of metallic atomic contacts made…
The electrical transport properties of atomic-scale conductors are reviewed, with an emphasis on the relations of this problem with studies on quantum size effects in metallic clusters. A brief introduction is given of the natural formalism…
Using remarkably simple experimental techniques it is possible to gently break a metallic contact and thus form conducting nanowires. During the last stages of the pulling a neck-shaped wire connects the two electrodes, the diameter of…
We study the dependence of the intrinsic conductance of a nanocontact on its shape by using the recursion-transfer-matrix method. Hour-glass, torus, and spherical shapes are defined through analytic potentials, the latter two serving as…
We calculate the conductance of a ballistic point contact to a superconducting wire, produced by the s-wave proximity effect in a semiconductor with spin-orbit coupling in a parallel magnetic field. The conductance G as a function of…
In transport experiments the quantum nature of matter becomes directly evident when changes in conductance occur only in discrete steps, with a size determined solely by Planck's constant h. The observations of quantized steps in the…
Quantum point contacts (QPCs) are cornerstones of mesoscopic physics and central building blocks for quantum electronics. Although the Fermi wave-length in high-quality bulk graphene can be tuned up to hundreds of nanometers, the…
The continuing miniaturization of microelectronics raises the prospect of nanometre-scale devices with mechanical and electrical properties that are qualitatively different from those at larger dimensions. The investigation of these…
Ballistic conductance through a single atom adsorbed on a metallic surface and probed by a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) tip can be decomposed into eigenchannel contributions, which can be potentially obtained from shot noise…
Recently, different experiments on the transport through atomic-sized contacts made of ferromagnetic materials have produced contradictory results. In particular, several groups have reported the observation of half-integer conductance…
We present a scanning probe microscopy technique for spatially resolving transport in cold atomic gases, in close analogy with scanning gate microscopy in semiconductor physics. The conductance of a quantum point contact connected to two…
Iron, cobalt and nickel are archetypal ferromagnetic metals. In bulk, electronic conduction in these materials takes place mainly through the $s$ and $p$ electrons, whereas the magnetic moments are mostly in the narrow $d$-electron bands,…
We study the variation of electron transmission through Au-S-benzene-S-Au junctions and related systems as a function of the structure of the Au:S contacts. For junctions with semi-infinite flat Au(111) electrodes, the highly coordinated…
We consider the electric conductivity in normal metals in presence of a strong magnetic field. It is assumed here that the Fermi surface of a metal has rather complicated form such that different types of quasiclassical electron…
The conductance of a contact, having a radius smaller than the Fermi wave length, on the surface of a thin metal film is investigated theoretically. It is shown that quantization of the electron energy spectrum in the film leads to a…