Quantum Transport in Nanostructures

Modern techniques allow the fabrication of structures at the nanometer scale, such as quantum dots, carbon nanotubes, atomic wires or molecular junctions. Charge and en-ergy transport properties of these nanostructures differ fundamentally from those of mac-roscopic systems. Quantum tunneling and interference effects influence the transport properties and phenomena such as conductance quantization, large current fluctuations as well as Coulomb or phonon blockade are observed.
In this talk, I will discuss mechanisms and phenomena of quantum transport in nanostructures, with a focus on electron transport in molecular junctions. Consisting of a single molecule bound to electrodes, molecular junctions are among the smallest electri-cal circuits. They provide a versatile architecture to study fundamental aspects of non-equilibrium quantum physics at the nanoscale and are of interest for applications in the field of molecular electronics.