Universal Conductance Fluctuations

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Universal Conductance Fluctuation (UCF) in quantum physics is a phenomenon encountered in electrical transport experiments in mesoscopic species. The measured electrical conductance will vary from sample to sample, mainly due to inhomogeneous scattering sites. Fluctuations originate from coherence effects for electronic wavefunctions and thus the phase-coherence length \textstyle l_\phi needs be smaller than the momentum relaxation length \textstyle l_m. UCF is more profound when electrical transport is in weak localization regime. \textstyle l_\phi<l_c where l_c=M\times l_m , \textstyle M is the number of conduction channels and \textstyle l_mis the momentum relaxation length or mean free path. For weakly localized samples fluctuation in conductance is equal to fundamental conductance \textstyle G_o=2\times e^2/h regardless of the number of channels.

[edit] References

  • S. Datta, Electronic Transport in Mesoscopic Systems, Cambridge University Press, (1995)
  • R. Saito, G. Dresselhaus and M. S. Dresselhaus, Physical Properties of Carbon Nanotubes, Imperial College Press (1998)
  • Nanohub website


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