Nano Express
A new transport phenomenon in nanostructures: a mesoscopic analog of the Braess paradox encountered in road networks
1 IMEP-LAHC, Grenoble INP, Minatec, BP 257, Grenoble, F-38016, France
2 Institut Néel, CNRS and Université Joseph Fourier, BP 166, Grenoble, F-38042, France
3 IMCN/NAPS, UCLouvain, 2 Chemin du Cyclotron, Louvain-la-Neuve, B-1348, Belgium
Nanoscale Research Letters 2012, 7:472 doi:10.1186/1556-276X-7-472
Published: 22 August 2012Abstract
The Braess paradox, known for traffic and other classical networks, lies in the fact that adding a new route to a congested network in an attempt to relieve congestion can degrade counterintuitively the overall network performance. Recently, we have extended the concept of the Braess paradox to semiconductor mesoscopic networks, whose transport properties are governed by quantum physics. In this paper, we demonstrate theoretically that, alike in classical systems, congestion plays a key role in the occurrence of a Braess paradox in mesoscopic networks.
