"Classical and Quantum Flow Over Hilly Terrain: Branching and Coherence"


Recent experimental and theoretical work on the branching of electron flow under the influence of soft potential energy hills and valleys in nanostructures will be presented (Nature, March 8 2001). The work is applicable to a variety of situations involving propagation through random media, and represents perhaps a new regime in chaos theory. The cumulative effect of long range travel over many correlation lengths of the potential surprisingly leaves strong, preferred branches of flow intact. The combination of such flow with billiard walls will be discussed. Theoretical foundations and quantum implications will be presented.