Mesoscopic "Rydberg" atom in a microwave field

Tomaz Prosen, Dima Shepelyansky

Published 2004-11-05, updated 2005-02-04Version 2

We establish analogy between a microwave ionization of Rydberg atoms and a charge transport through a chaotic quantum dot induced by a monochromatic field in a regime with a potential barrier between dot contacts. We show that the quantum coherence leads to dynamical localization of electron excitation in number of photons absorbed inside the dot. The theory developed determines the dependence of localization length on dot and microwave parameters showing that the microwave power can switch the dot between metallic and insulating regimes.