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This textbook describes the physics of semiconductor nanostructures with emphasis on their electronic transport properties. At its heart are five fundamental transport phenomena: quantized conductance, tunnelling transport, the Aharonov-Bohm effect, the quantum Hall effect, and the Coulomb blockade effect.

The book starts out with the basics of solid state and semiconductor physics, such as crystal structure, band structure, and effective mass approximation, including spin-orbit interaction effects important for research in semiconductor spintronics. It contains material aspects such as band engineering, doping, gating, and a selection of nanostructure fabrication techniques. The book discusses the Drude-Boltzmann-Sommerfeld transport theory as well as conductance quantization and the Landauer-Büttiker theory. These concepts are extended to mesoscopic interference phenomena and decoherence, magnetotransport, and interaction effects in quantum-confined systems, guiding the reader from fundamental effects to specialized state-of-the-art experiments.

The book will provide a thorough introduction into the topic for graduate and PhD students, and will be a useful reference for lecturers and researchers working in the field.



Table of Contents

1: Introduction
2: Semiconductor Crystals
3: Band Structure
4: Envelope function and effective mass approximation
5: Material aspects of heterostructures, doping, surfaces, and gating
6: Fabrication of semiconductor nanostructures
7: Electrostatics of Semiconductor nanostructures
8: Quantum mechanics of semiconductor nanostructures
9: Two-dimensional electron gases in heterostructures
10: Diffusive classical transport in two-dimensional electron gases
11: Ballistic electron transport in quantum point contacts
12: Tunneling transport through potential barriers
13: Multiterminal systems
14: Interference effects in nanostructures
15: Diffusive quantum transport
16: Magnetotransport in two-dimensional systems
17: Interaction effects in diffusive two-dimensional systems
18: Quantum dots
19: Coupled quantum dots
20: Electronic noise in semiconductor nanostructures
21: The Fano effect
22: Measurements of the transmission phase
23: Controlled dephasing experiments
24: Quantum information processing