Direct measurement of Thouless’s length-dependent conductance on a submicron length scale

Abstract

We describe experiments in which quasi one-dimensional wires are doped with magnetic impurities at submicron intervals. The discrete doped regions serve as ideal probes of the spatial extent of the interference effects responsible for the weak-localization corrections to conductance. The experiments are the first direct comparison of Thouless’s length-dependent conductance prediction to an accurate length scale.