Quantum Conductance of the Single Electron Transistor

TL;DR

This paper investigates the quantum conductance of single-electron transistors using a functional integral approach, revealing anomalies at low tunnel resistances and analyzing gate voltage dependence.

Contribution

It introduces a semiclassical path integral method to compute quantum conductance for arbitrary tunnel resistances at any temperature.

Findings

Anomaly in quantum conductance at low tunnel resistances.

Explicit non-perturbative formula for conductance.

Dependence of conductance on gate voltage discussed.

Abstract

The quantum conductance of the single-electron tunneling (SET) transistor is investigated in this paper by the functional integral approach. The formalism is valid for arbitrary tunnel resistance of the junctions forming the SET transistor at any temperature. The path integrals are evaluated by the semiclassical method to yield an explicit non-perturbation form of the quantum conductance of the SET transistor. An anomaly of the quantum conductance is found if the tunnel resistances are much smaller than the quantum resistance. The dependence of the conductance on the gate voltage is also discussed.