We have calculated the photoconductance of a parabolic quantum wire subject to a magnetic field. It is shown that the photoconductance has maxima in the vicinity of a threshold of ballistic conductance steps. Electromagnetic irradiation is found to decrease the resistance of the quantum wire. The dependence of the photoconductance on the radiation frequency, on the magnetic field, and on the electron energy is investigated.Quantum wires are widely used to study the conductance quantization in three-dimensional systems. As a rule the transport properties of such systems are studied ignoring the influence of a high-frequency electromagnetic field on the conductance. However, the use of microwave irradiation with an applied magnetic field may provide a convenient tool to study quantum electron states in nanostructures. Therefore, the influence of electromagnetic irradiation on the conductance is attracting a great deal of experimental 1-5 and theoretical 6-9 interest.Note that the electric current is more favorable to measure than the absorption coefficient to study the electron states because a direct measurement of the absorption is restricted by the fact that the volume of the wire is much smaller than the total volume of the electromagnetic resonator. 8 The absorption of the electromagnetic field, polarized in the transverse direction ͑in this case there is no transfer of longitudinal momentum͒, can give a strong influence on the conductance due to electron transitions between different modes in the system. 9 Only electrons above the Fermi surface make a positive contribution to the photocurrent. In this case the states below the Fermi surface are occupied by the electrons from the reservoir. Hence the ordinary ballistic conductance, which is conditioned by the electrons below Fermi surface, does not change. Since only photoelectrons make a contribution to the photocurrent it is necessary to count the number of electrons above the Fermi surface to calculate the photoconductance. Thus one of the criteria of nonzero photocurrent is as follows: average time of electron transitions from the reservoir to the wire must be less than average time of electron transitions from the one reservoir to the other. Additionally, the condition for the conductance to be ballistic is as follows: the average transition time from the one reservoir to the other must be less than the average time of the phase-breaking process. 10 Thus in our case the total conductance of the system is a sum of the ordinary conductance and photoconductance. The latter is due to the photoelectron above Fermi surface ͑i.e., due to the electrons in excited levels͒.The purpose of this work is to investigate the influence of a high-frequency electromagnetic field on the conductance quantization in the three-dimensional anisotropic quantum wire. To model the confinement of the quantum wire we use the parabolic potential. This potential is widely employed in theoretical investigations to study the physical properties of quantum wires. 11,12 Note also that in m...