Conductance fluctuations due to a single bistable scatterer in a weakly connected conductor.

Abstract

We study the effect of a single bistable scatterer on conductance of mesoscopic conductors in the crossover regime from open to closed systems. After the resistance of the contact between the metallic grain and bulk electrode exceeds the resistance of a grain, the effect of a bistability is enhanced and takes the universal form. Its efficiency scales with the cross-section of the bistable impurity and of conductances of contacts but is independent of this impurity position inside a sample. Mutual correlations between magneto-conductance fluctuations at two conductance levels also look universal. Enhancement of the conductance sensitivity to variations of impurity configurations in samples with highly resistive contacts transforms the spectral density of a quantum excess noise toward a white-noise behavior and requires higher stability of the sample in order to observe mesoscopic effects in direct-current measurements.