Persistent currents in mesoscopic rings and boundary conformal field theory

A tight-binding model of electron dynamics in mesoscopic normal rings is st udied using boundary conformal field theory. The partition function is calc ulated in the low energy limit and the persistent current generated as a fu nction of an external magnetic flux threading the ring is found. We study t he cases where there are defects and electron-electron interactions separat ely. The same temperature scaling for the persistent current is found in ea ch case and the functional form can be fitted, with a high degree of accura cy, to experimental data.