The Kondo effect in a single-electron transistor

The Kondo effect, which occurs when a metal with magnetic impurities is cooled to low temperatures, has been a focus of research in solid-state physics for several decades. I have designed, fabricated, and measured a system which behaves as a single "artificial" impurity in a metal, displaying the Kondo effect. This so-called Single-Electron Transistor (SET) has several advantages over the classic bulk Kondo systems. Most obviously, only one impurity is involved, so there is no need to worry about interactions between impurities, or different impurities feeling different environments. But even more importantly all the parameters of the system, such as the binding energy of electrons on the impurity and the tunneling rate between metal and impurity, can be tuned in-situ, allowing detailed quantitative comparison to thirty years of theoretical developments whose details could not be tested in previously-studied Kondo systems.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

1999

Author dc:creator

• Goldhaber-Gordon, David Joshua, 1972-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Marc A. Kastner.

• Physics

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/9450

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/9450