Steplike electric conduction in a classical two-dimensional electron system through a narrow constriction in a microchannel

Abstract

Using molecular dynamics simulations, we investigate transport properties of a classical two-dimensional electron system confined in a microchannel with a narrow constriction. As a function of the confinement strength of the constriction, the calculated conductance in the simulations exhibits steplike increases, as reported in a recent experiment [ Rees et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 106 026803 (2011)]. It is confirmed that the number of the steps corresponds to the number of stream lines of electrons through the constriction. We verify that density fluctuation plays a major role in smoothing the steps in the conductance.