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In this report, we review the results of our joint experimental and theoretical studies of electroninterference, and interaction, phenomena in open electron cavities known as quantum dots. The transport through these structures is shown to be heavily influenced by the remnants of their discrete density of states, elements of which remain resolved in spite of the strong coupling that exists between the cavity and its reservoirs. The experimental signatures of this density of states are discussed at length in this report, and are shown to be related to characteristic wavefunction scarring, involving a small number of classical orbits. A semiclassical analysis of this behaviour shows it to be related to the effect of dynamical tunnelling, in which electrons injected into the dot tunnel through classically forbidden regions of phase space, to access isolated regular orbits. The dynamical tunnelling gives rise to the formation of long-lived quasi-bound states in the open dots, and the many-body implications associated with electron charging at these resonances are also explored in this report.

In this paper, we combine the modified electrostatics of a one-dimensional transistor structure with a quantum kinetic formulation of Coulomb interaction and nonequilibrium transport. A multi-configurational self-consistent Green's function approach is presented, accounting for fluctuating electron numbers. On this basis we provide a theory for the simulation of electronic transport and quantum charging effects in nanotransistors, such as a gated carbon nanotube and whisker devices and one-dimensional CMOS transistors. Singleelectron charging effects arise naturally as a consequence of the Coulomb repulsion within the channel.

We report on a quantum collimation effect based on surface depletion regions in AlAs/GaAs nanocolumns with an embedded resonant tunneling structure. The considered MBE-grown nanodevices have been fabricated by means of a top-down approach that employs a reproducible lithographic definition of the vertical nanocolumns. By analyzing the scaling properties of these nanodevices, we discuss how a collimation effect due to a saddle point in the confining potential can explain an improved device performance of the ultimately scaled structures at room temperature.

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