Coherent manipulation of normal and Andreev fermions

A large part of condensed matter physics concerns itself with understanding the behaviour of electrons in solids and finding ways to control them. However, in mesoscopic systems (i.e., systems with nanometer to micrometre scale), the behaviour of electrons is difficult to predict through the Schrödinger equation. Instead, it is often more...

Correlated Spin Phenomena in Molecular Quantum Transport Devices

In this thesis we study charge transport through individual molecules and mainly focus on the properties of molecular spin. We fabricate nanoscale structures for transport measurements and employ the electromigration break-junction technique to realize three-terminal—transistor-like—single-molecule devices. We investigate the spin-related...

Single–molecule conductance measurements: Correlations between chemical design and electronic properties

This thesis is about measurements of the electrical properties of different families of molecules. The research was focused on fundamental questions of charge transport in organic molecules. With this aim, experiments were performed to shed light on the underlying transport mechanisms. For example, an important ingredient of the work concerned...

Quantum Transport Phenomena in Magnetic Molecules

In this work, we investigate a series of physical phenomena resulting from the confinement of electrons in those localised charge and spin quantum boxes generically called molecules.

Quantum Transport in Indium Antimonide Nanowires: Investigating building blocks for Majorana devices

Recently ideas to engineer Majorana fermions in the solid state have been developed. These Majoranas, quasiparticles that are their own antiparticle, have received much attention, as they are expected to fulfill non-Abelian exchange statistics and could potentially function as fault-tolerant quantum bits. This thesis focuses on a Majorana host...

Adiabatic quantum pumping via Dirac fermions

Quantum Pumping and Adiabatic Transport in Nanostructures

This thesis consists of a theoretical exploration of quantum transport phenomena and quantum dynamics in nanostructures. Specifically, we investigate adiabatic quantum pumping of charge in several novel types of nanostructures involving open quantum dots or graphene. For a bilayer of graphene we find that at the Dirac point and for a wide...

Electron transport through single donors in silicon

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