ATTENTION: unusual hour / ATTENTION : heure inhabituelle / ATTENTION: unusual hour ==================================================================== The class of questions we want to address here is as follows: &quote;Can new physics emerge at the mesoscopic scale when the leads are poor conductors?&quote; The poor conductors will be embodied by a macroscopic resistance R which can be a non-negligible fraction of the quantum of resistance (25.8 kOhms). From the fluctuation-dissipation theorem this resistance then produces electromagnetic noise which is known for example to affect transport properties through a single-barrier (weak-link). As emphasized by Safi and Saleur recently the problem can be mapped onto the Kane-Fisher model which means an impurity in a Luttinger liquid producing an orthogonality catastrophe and a highly non-linear I-V curve. Here, we want to generalize such investigations in double-barrier or quantum dot structures and we seek to explore new quantum phase transitions driven by the electromagnetic noise. Our work addresses the possibility to detect the competition between &quote;Kondo physics&quote; and &quote;Caldeira-Leggett dissipation&quote; leading to striking quantum phase transitions.

Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada