1995/11/16 by Alexander Altland, Yuval Gefen, Gilles Montambaux · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Force Microscopy Techniques and Applications #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.76.1130
4 pages REVTEX, uuencoded file. To appear in Physical Review Letters
arxiv created 1995/11/16 · openalex publication_date 1996/02/12 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The Thouless energy, \Ec characterizes numerous quantities associated with sensitivity to boundary conditions in diffusive mesoscopic conductors. What happens to these quantities if the disorder strength is decreased and a transition to the ballistic regime takes place? In the present analysis we refute the intuitively plausible assumption that \Ec loses its meaning as an inverse diffusion time through the system at hand, and generally disorder independent scales take over. Instead we find that a variety of (thermodynamic) observables are still characterized by the Thouless energy.