Mesoscopic Capacitors: A Statistical Analysis

The capacitance of mesoscopic samples depends on their geometry and physical properties, described in terms of characteristic times scales. The resulting ac admittance shows sample to sample fluctuations. Their distribution is studied here—through a random-matrix model—for a chaotic cavity capacitively coupled to a backgate: it is observed from the distribution of scattering time delays for the cavity, which is found analytically for the orthogonal, unitary, and symplectic universality classes, one mode in the lead connecting the cavity to the reservoir and no direct scattering. The results agree with numerical simulations.