The Periodicity of Persistent Currents in Mesoscopic Rings

Abstract

In a tight-binding model, we find that the equation of the Green's function in a onedimensional mesoscopic ring threaded by a Aharonov-Bohm (AB) flux can be exactly solved. From the poles of the Green's function, the eigenvalues are obtained and are periodic in the AB flux with period h/e. However, the periodicity of the persistent currents is determined by the number of electrons in the ring.