Fluctuating transport in microstructures

In this dissertation, we study electronic transport properties of various kinds of quasi-one dimensional (Q1D) systems. The dissertation can be divided into the following categories: (1) Conductance fluctuations and phase coherence in microstructures. We study the conductance fluctuations for three different regimes of electronic transport: ballistic, diffusive and variable-range-hopping (VRH). Various numerical methods are used in the calculations. In the VRH problem, we also examine the possibility of observing the Aharonov-Bohm effect. We develop a technique based on the recursive Kubo formula to study the universal conductance fluctuations in the diffusive regime. Close comparison with relevant experiments is made and good agreement is found. (2) Drude transport properties of quasi-one dimensional systems. In this problem, we calculate the density of states and Drude conductivity for the screened impurity scattering using many body theory. The DOS and conductivity show strong oscillatory behavior as a function of the Fermi-energy. Self-consistency is included in our theory. Good agreement with experiment is found. (3) Transport in quasicrystals. In solving this problem we use the Landauer formula approach. We find that the electrical resistance of a finite 1D Fibonacci-sequence quasicrystal shows strong fluctuations as resonant tunneling occurs through the allowed energy states of the system. Power law localization and self-similarity can be seen in the transport properties. A possible experiment to observe this phenomenon is suggested