Charge Quantization and Kondo Quantum Criticality in Few-Channel Mesoscopic Circuits

This thesis explores several fundamental topics in mesoscopic circuitries that incorporate few electronic conduction channels. It reports a series of long-awaited experiments that establish a new state of the art.

The first experiments address the quantized character of charge in circuits. We demonstrate the charge quantization criterion, observe the predicted charge quantization scaling and a crossover toward a universal behavior as temperature is increased.

The second set of experiment...