Chaos, Interactions, and Nonequilibrium Effects in the Tunneling Resonance Spectra of Ultrasmall Metallic Particles

Abstract

We explain the observation of clusters in the tunneling resonance spectra of ultrasmall metallic particles of a few nanometer size. Each cluster of resonances is identified with one excited single-electron state of the metal particle, shifted as a result of the different nonequilibrium occupancy configurations of the other single-electron states. Assuming the underlying classical dynamics of the electrons to be chaotic, we determine the typical shift to be $\ensuremath{\Delta}/g$ where \ensuremath{\Delta} is the single particle mean level spacing and $g$ is the dimensionless conductance of the grain.