Dresden 2003 – scientific programme
Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Downloads | Help
TT: Tiefe Temperaturen
TT 12: Mesoskopische Systeme II
TT 12.2: Talk
Wednesday, March 26, 2003, 15:00–15:15, HSZ03
Conductance of a hydrogen molecule — •Jan Heurich1, Fabian Pauly1, Juan Carlos Cuevas1, Wolfgang Wenzel2, and Gerd Schön1,2 — 1Institut für theoret. Festkörperphysik, Universität Karlsruhe — 2Institut für Nanotechnologie, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe
We present a theory for the electrical conductance of a single hydrogen molecule between Pt leads explaining recent experimental obervations by Smit et. al. (Nature 419, 906-909, (2002)). We develop a simple theoretical model to understand the conduction mechanism through the hydrogen bridge and match it to quantitative density functional calculations. Our analysis elucidates which specific ingredients are required for the proper description of the system. In particular we identify how symmetry induced interference effects, similar to those known from light propagation in photonic crystals and sound propagation in periodic structures, control the number of available conduction channels. We also show how the analysis of the conduction channels gives information about the experimentally realized contact geometry.