Quantum conductance fluctuations and classical short-path dynamics

Abstract

We present numerical results for ballistic-electron quantum transport through weakly open integrable circle and chaotic stadium billiards. The geometry of the pair of conducting leads is chosen in accordance with recent experiments for semiconductor microstructures [Marcus et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 69, 506 (1992)]. The conductance as a function of the Fermi wave number displays characteristic noisy fluctuations for both the integrable and the chaotic systems. We show that structures in the conductance autocorrelation function as a function of the Fermi wave number are related to short-length classical orbits. This correspondence permits incorporation of effects of phase decoherence due to incoherent scattering into the quantum calculation.