On the macroscopic quantization in mesoscopic rings and single-electron devices

Abstract

In this letter the phenomenon of macroscopic quantization is investigated using the particle on the ring interacting with the dissipative environment as an example. It is shown that the phenomenon of macroscopic quantization has the clear physical origin in that case. It follows from the angular momentum conservation combined with momentum quantization for bare particle on the ring . The existence an observable which can take only integer values in the zero temperature limit is rigorously proved. With the aid of the mapping between particle on the ring and Ambegaokar-Eckern-Schon model, which can be used to describe single-electron devices, it is demonstrated that this observable is analogous to the "effective charge" introduced by Burmistrov and Pruisken for the single-electron box problem. Different consequences of the revealed physics are discussed, as well as a generalization of the obtained results to the case of more complicated systems.