Preface

Summary

The original edition of this book grew out of our somewhat disorganized attempts to teach the physics and electronics of mesoscopic devices over the past decade. Fortunately, these evolved into a more consistent approach, and the book tried to balance experiments and theory in the current, at that time, understanding of mesoscopic physics. Whenever possible, we attempted to first introduce the important experimental results in this field followed by the relevant theoretical approaches. The focus of the book was on electronic transport in nanostructure systems, and therefore by necessity we omitted many important aspects of nanostructures such as their optical properties, or details of nanostructure fabrication. Due to length considerations, many germane topics related to transport itself did not receive full coverage, or were referred to only by reference. Also, due to the enormity of the literature related to this field, we did not include an exhaustive bibliography of nanostructure transport. Rather, we tried to refer the interested reader to comprehensive review articles and book chapters when possible.

The decision to do a second edition of this book was reached only after long and hard consideration and discussion among the authors. While the first edition was very successful, the world has changed significantly since its publication. The second edition would have to be revised extensively and considerable new material added. A decision to go ahead was made only after welcoming Jon Bird to the author's team.