PERSISTENT CURRENTS IN MESOSCOPIC RINGS AND BOUNDARY CONFORMAL FIELD THEORY

A tight-binding model of electron dynamics in mesoscopic normal rings is studied using boundary conformal field theory. The partition function is calculated in the low energy limit and the persistent current generated as a function of an external magnetic flux threading the ring is found. We study the cases where there are defects and electron–electron interactions separately. The same temperature scaling for the persistent current is found in each case and the functional form can be fitted, with a high degree of accuracy, to experimental data.