Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Universal Scaling Of Nonlocal And Local Resistance Fluctuations In Small Wires, H. Haucke, S. Washburn, A. D. Benoit, C. P. Umbach, Richard A. Webb

Faculty Publications

Resistance fluctuations in small metal samples result from coherent transport of the carriers. The wave functions of the carriers extend into regions which are not accessible classically. We have directly measured the length dependence of the nonlocal magnetoresistance fluctuations in Sb and Au wires by studying regions of our samples separated from the classical current path by a distance L which varied from 3L_cphi down to 0.2L_cphi (where L_cphi is the phase coherence length for the carriers in the metal). These fluctuations decay exponentially with L/L_cphi. Measurements along the classical current paths scale more slowly …