Physics Colloquium - Friday, March 5th, 2010, 3:00 P.M.

Michael Pustilnik
Department of Physics
Georgia Institute of Technology

In this talk I will discuss the basic physics of the Kondo effect and its manifestations in the low-temperature electronic transport through nanosystems. Kondo effect arises whenever a coupling to the Fermi gas induces transitions within the otherwise degenerate ground state multiplet of an interacting system. Both coupling to the Fermi gas and interactions are naturally present in any nanoscale transport experiment. At the same time, many nanostructures can be easily tuned to the vicinity of a degeneracy point. This is why the Kondo effect in its various forms often influences the low temperature transport in meso- and nanoscale systems.