Category: List of Bases 2005 Throughout the year RESEARCH IN CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS

Title:

Informal seminar on Disorder and strong electron correlations: "Can a fractional charge tunnel through an insulator?"

Start Time:

11:00

Location:

ICTP (Main Building Room 239)

Contact:

M. Poropat

Speaker(s):

Y. Gefen (The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot)

Description:

It is widely believed that the answer to the question in the title is in the negative. The exclusion of such a process - tunneling of a fractionally charged quasi-particle through a potential barrier (an insulator) goes back to a "global constraint": the number of charge carriers on either side of the barrier must be (nearly) an integer. We address the issue of a QP tunneling in connection with geometries where this constraint does not apply, point out to the feasibility of such tunneling and evaluate its amplitude.