J. Burki, C. A. Stafford
Published 2001-06-13Version 1
Experimental conductance histograms built from several thousand successive breakings of sodium nanowires exhibit peaks up to rather high conductance values (100 x 2e^2/h). In this paper, we present results from a disordered free-electron model of a metallic nanowire, which was previously successful in describing both conductance histograms and shot noise measurements in gold nanocontacts with much lower conductances. We find in particular that, with a modification of the model of disorder, the conductance histogram can be understood as an interplay of conductance quantization and disorder for low conductances (G < 10 x 2e^2/h), while peaks corresponding to higher conductance are actually a combination of several ``quantized conductance peaks''. We also predict a saturation of the shot noise at high conductance to about 1/10 of its classical value 2eI.
Comments: 4 pages, 1 figure, to be published in the proceedings of the XXXVI Rencontres de Moriond
Journal: "Electronic Correlations: from meso- to nano-physics", ed. by T.Martin, G. Montambaux, and J. Tran Thanh Van (EDP Sciences, Les Ulis, France, 2001), pp. 27-30
Metal Nanowires: Quantum Transport, Cohesion, and Stability
Jahn-Teller Distortions and the Supershell Effect in Metal Nanowires
On the Stability and Structural Dynamics of Metal Nanowires
