CLASSICAL ANALOGS OF MESOSCOPIC QUANTUM PHENOMENA

An important aspect of mesoscopic electronic systems is that the elect rons maintain their phase coherence and propagate as waves. The result ing behavior is complicated by disorder, time-dependent scattering sit es and many-electron effects (possibly modeled with a nonlinear wave e quation). Studying the latter effects theoretically or experimentally in mesoscopic electronic systems is difficult. However, it is possible to contrive classical wave systems which precisely duplicate the sali ent features of the quantum electron problem, and which may be readily studied experimentally. This paper will describe the use of such syst ems to study phonon assisted hopping, the effects of nonlinearity on A nderson localization, the effects of Penrose tile symmetry, noise in m esoscopic electronics, 'superdiffusion', and to study an aspect of the discrepancy between theory and experiment for normal electron persist ent currents in mesoscopic rings.