Physicists Watch Individual Electrons Flow

SG writes "Physicists at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed the world's most sensitive ammeter yet. The device allows current to be measured at the attoampere level and is expected to be of use in nanoelectronics, calibration devices, quantum computation and biology."

Comments

Current, tunneling ?

[karvind]

I RTFA and it employs two quantum dots to distinguish the direction of the flow. As the article mentions: scientists already know how count single electrons travelling through an individual quantum dot

My question is if I want to measure current (assume an ideal current source) then I will hook it up to this new invention. The mechanism of current in this new measuring device is quantum tunneling. Is there any reason that the current source in question employs the same mechanism. It may still be conventional drift-diffusion with very very low fields (and probably very low mobility). Now when I interface it with this double-quantum device, does the change in mechanism ensures current quantity ? If answer yes, what is the intutive answer. I can understand current continuity when it is drift and diffusion.

Re:So does this mean...

[Memnos]

I think that a plausible explanation (or at least one that deserves more research) is the Pilot Wave theory proposed by de Broglie-Bohm. See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/ and other numerous sites for a discusion of this proposition. (Disclaimer: I have never been a big fan of the Copenhagen Interpetation.) Nonetheless, I feel that an explanation which obviates the "observer problem" and explains decoherence merits looking at.