Physical Society Colloquium

In a quantum dot electrons are confined within a small region of space. The confinement survives even if macroscopic conducting leads are attached to the dot. Such a contact, however, establishes coherence between the spin of the dot and spin system of the macroscopic conductor. At low temperature conduction electrons "screen" the dot's spin. This many-body phenomenon is known as Kondo effect. It manifests itself spectacularly in transport through a quantum dot: the conductance reaches the highest value allowed by quantum mechanics. This talk is devoted to an introduction to the Kondo physics in quantum dot systems.

Thursday January 10th 2002, 16:00
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, Boardroom (room 104)