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We study the dynamics of a tagged monomer of a Rouse polymer for different initial configurations. In the case of free evolution, the monomer displays subdiffusive behavior with strong memory of the initial state. In the presence of either elastic pinning or harmonic absorption, we show that the steady state is independent of the initial condition that, however, strongly affects the transient regime, resulting in nonmonotonic behavior and power-law relaxation with varying exponents.

Using the joint distribution for proper time delays of a chaotic cavity derived by Brouwer, Frahm, and Beenakker [Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 4737 (1997)], we obtain, in the limit of the large number of channels N, the large deviation function for the distribution of the Wigner time delay (the sum of proper times) by a Coulomb gas method. We show that the existence of a power law tail originates from narrow resonance contributions, related to a (second order) freezing transition in the Coulomb gas.

We investigate weak localization in metallic networks etched in a two-dimensional electron gas between 25 and 750 mK when electron-electron (e-e) interaction is the dominant phase breaking mechanism. We show that, at the highest temperatures, the contributions arising from trajectories that wind around the rings and trajectories that do not are governed by two different length scales. This is achieved by analyzing separately the envelope and the oscillating part of the magnetoconductance. For T > or approximately 0.3 K we find L phi env proportional T(-1/3) for the envelope and L phi osc proportional, T(-1/2) for the oscillations, in agreement with the prediction for a single ring [T. Ludwig and A. D. Mirlin, Phys. Rev. B 69, 193306 (2004); 10.1103/PhysRevB.69.193306C. Texier and G. Montambaux, Phys. Rev. B 72, 115327 (2005); 10.1103/PhysRevB.72.115327C. Texier, Phys. Rev. B76, 153312 (2007)10.1103/PhysRevB.76.153312]. This is the first experimental confirmation of the geometry dependence of decoherence due to e-e interaction.

We report on magnetoconductance measurements of metallic networks of various sizes ranging from 10 to 10(6) plaquettes, with an anisotropic aspect ratio. Both Altshuler-Aronov-Spivak h/2e periodic oscillations and Aharonov-Bohm h/e periodic oscillations are observed for all networks. For large samples, the amplitude of both oscillations results from the incoherent superposition of contributions of phase coherent regions. When the transverse size becomes smaller than the phase coherent length Lphi, one enters a new regime which is phase coherent (mesoscopic) along one direction and macroscopic along the other, leading to a new size dependence of the quantum oscillations.

The low temperature magnetoconductance of a large array of quantum coherent loops exhibits Altshuler-Aronov-Spivak oscillations with a periodicity corresponding to 1/2 flux quantum per loop. We show that the measurement of the harmonics content provides an accurate way to determine the electron phase-coherence length L(phi) in units of the lattice length with no adjustable parameters. We use this method to determine L(phi) in a square network realized from a 2D electron gas in a GaAs/GaAlAs heterojunction, with only a few conducting channels. The temperature dependence follows a power law T(-1/3) from 1.3 K to 25 mK with no saturation, as expected for 1D diffusive electronic motion and electron-electron scattering as the main decoherence mechanism.

We study the quantum transport through networks of diffusive wires connected to reservoirs in the Landauer-Büttiker formalism. The elements of the conductance matrix are computed by the diagrammatic method. We recover the combination of classical resistances and obtain the weak localization corrections. For arbitrary networks, we show how the Cooperon must be properly weighted over the different wires. Its nonlocality is clearly analyzed. We predict a new geometrical effect that may change the sign of the weak localization correction in multiterminal geometries.