Statistical Properties of the Conductance of Disordered Wires: From atomic‐scale contacts to macroscopically long nanowires

In this work, we review some statistical properties of the conductance of disordered wires. Random Matrix Theory is used to analyze the results of extensive numerical calculations for both surface and bulk disordered wires. This approach, macroscopic in nature, has been applied successfully to study different transport properties all the way from localization to quasiballistic transport and even to the limit of atomic‐scale metallic contacts. The evolution of the conductance statistical distribution in the transition from diffusion (Gaussian statistics) to localization (log normal statistics) is also discussed.