Fall semester 2009
Prof. Dr. Dominik Zumbühl, 

last updated February 8, 2010 

previous semesters courses:
Fall 2008, Fall 2007, Winter 2006/7, Spring 2006

lectures Thursdays, 8:20am to 10am, weekly, Room 4.1

exercises Thursdays, 14:30 to 15:15, weekly, Room 3.12

syllabus 2D electron gas, quantum point contacts, quantum dots, conductance fluctuations, quantum phase coherence, Coulomb blockade, Kondo effect, few electron dots, spin blockade, spin relaxation, charge sensing, single spin measurement, spin manipulation and coherence, nuclear spins, electron spin resonance, spin qubits, quantum computation. syllabus pdf

for: 6. semester bachelor and masters students in nanoscience and physics. physics III lecture is a prerequisite

credit points 2 credit points lecture and (optional) 2 credit points exercises. 
Lecture is a two hours per week course, no problem sets, final presentation, pass/fail.
The exercises will consist of reading a series of scientific publications relevant to class, meeting one hour per week where papers discussed by the students in depth.

purpose of this lecture is to bring the audience up to date on current experimental research in the field of quantum transport through nanostructures, focusing mainly on quantum dots in GaAs, spin-quibts in coupled dots and quantum computation. The lecture will inevitably discuss some simple condensed matter theory but will mainly focus on experiments.

structure will be a combination of lectures on my part to intruduce the basics and subsequent presentations done by students towards the end of the semester on topics that can be chosen by students from a selection. There will be no problem sets, but moderate amounts of reading as preparation for lectures will be assigned. The class is pass/fail, and the evaluation will be based on the presentation given by each student taking the class for credit. Sit-ins/students auditing the class (not for credit) are welcome.

Lecture Schedule and Content, HS 2009

Exercise Schedule and Content, HS 2009

Organization of the exercises: As a preparation for the exercises, the students thoroughly read the one or two papers assigned before the exercise, see list below for a schedule of papers. The assigned papers are typically 3-4 pages long. It is expected that every student has at least two questions ready as a basis or starting point for a discussion. In class, the papers are discussed in detail. Focus is on depth, not breadth. In every exercise class, one student is randomly picked to be the discussion leader / mediator. To assist the discussion, I will prepare slides containing the graphs of the paper. The exercise is pass fail, based on individual preparedness.

Projects and Presentations, HS09

Presentations should be no longer than about 20 to 25 minutes, plus 5 to 10 minutes for questions. 
Goal of the presentation is to explain to your fellow classmates the topic you have chosen 
as clearly and as concisely as possible while keeping a critical attitude towards the reported research.
List of available topics (below) will be modified / adapted, but will vaguely consist of the topics listed below.

Topics with more than one article: 
choose one article for in-depth presentation, mention highlights of other paper(s). 

Literature

books
“Mesoscopic Electronics in Solid State Nanostructures”, Thomas Heinzel, Wiley-VCH (2003)
 “Electronic Transport in Mesoscopic Systems”, Supriyo Datta, Cambridge Universy Press (1995)
 “The Physics of Low-Dimensional Semicond.”, John H. Davies, Cambridge University Press (1998)

review articles
“Quantum Transport in Semiconductor Nanostructures”, C. W. J. Beenakker and H. van Houten, published in Solid State Physics, 44, 1-228 (1991) (out of print, available at arXive:cond-mat/0412664) pdf

“Electron Transport in Quantum Dots”, L. P. Kouwenhoven, C. M. Marcus, P. L. McEuen, S. Tarucha, R. M. Westervelt and N. Wingreen, NATO ASI conference proceedings, edited by L. L. Sohn, L. P. Kouwenhoven and G. Schön (Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1997). pdf

“Coulomb Blockade Oscillations in Semiconductor Nanostructures”, H. van Houten, C. W. J. Beenakker and A. A. M. Staring, published in Single Charge Tunneling, edited by H. Grabert and M. H. Devoret,  NATO ASI series B294 (Plenum, New York, 1992), (out of print, available at arXive:cond-mat/0508454). pdf

“Few-Electron Quantum Dots”, L. P. Kouwenhoven, D. G. Austing and S. Tarucha, Rep. Prog. Phys. 64, 701 (2001). pdf

“Electron transport through double quantum dots”, W. G. van der Wiel, S. De Franceschi, J. M. Elzerman, T. Fujisawa, S. Tarucha, and L. P. Kouwenhoven, Rev. Mod. Phys. 75, 1-22 (2003) pdf

“Recipes for Spin Based Quantum Computing”, V. Cerletti, W. A. Coish, O. Gywat and D. Loss, Nanotechnology 16, R27 (2005). pdf

“Spins in few-electron quantum dots”, R. Hanson, L. P. Kouwenhoven, J. R. Petta, S. Tarucha, and L. M. Vandersypen, Rev. Mod. Phys. 79, 1217-1265 (2007) pdf

“Coherent manipulation of single spins in semiconductors”, R. Hanson and D. Awschalom, Nature 453, 1043 (June 2008, Insight Review) pdf