PERIODIC CONDUCTANCE OSCILLATIONS IN THE SINGLE-ELECTRON TUNNELING TRANSISTOR

An expression is derived for Coulomb oscillations of conductance of the single-electron tunneling (SET) transistor in the ''metallic'' regime, when the discreteness of the single-particle energy spectrum of the electrodes is negligible. This expression describes in a unified way both the conductance maxima which are determined by the ''classical'' sequential electron tunneling, and conductance minima determined by the macroscopic quantum tunneling of electric charge.