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Condensed-matter physics

A nanotube laboratory

Nature volume 397, pages 648–649 (1999)Cite this article

Fifty years ago and more, physicists used beams of particles guided through vacuum chambers to investigate fundamental issues such as wave-particle duality and the scattering of particles from one another. More recently, they have tended to prefer to do similar experiments in cleverly constructed condensed-matter systems. This is because electrons and photons often pass through solids or liquids very much like they do through a vacuum, but with subtle, varied and highly controllable modifications to their behaviour. The latest trend is to use not bulk materials but individual, appropriately formed molecules to form the experimental apparatus. The potential for doing basic physics experiments using a single molecule is nicely illustrated by Bachtold et al. on page 673 of this issue1, where they report observation of the Aharonov-Bohm effect in a single carbon nanotube.

It was not long before the Aharonov-Bohm effect was observed3, using the well-established techniques for manipulating electron beams in a vacuum. Two decades later the new field of mesoscopic physics arose, in which pieces of metal or semiconductor were made so small and cold that the conduction electrons moved around in them as coherent waves. Fundamental to mesoscopic systems is the interference between a host of different paths available to electrons passing from one point to another. In a magnetic field the Aharonov-Bohm effect should occur between every pair of possible paths, with important but generally rather messy consequences, because the paths are often very complicated and numerous.

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Figure 1: Observing the Aharonov-Bohm effect — the quantum mechanical influence of a magnetic field on the motion of electrons — at very different scales.

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  1. The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 5, DK-2100, Copenhagen, Denmark

    David H. Cobden

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  1. David H. Cobden
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Cobden, D. A nanotube laboratory. Nature 397, 648–649 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/17682

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