Charge Transfer and Charge Transport on the Double Helix

We present a short review of various experiments that measure charge transfer and charge transport in DNA. Some general comments are made on the possible connection between 'chemistry-style' charge transfer experiments that probe fluorescence quenching and remote oxidative damage and 'physics-style' measurements that measure transport properties as defined typically in the solid-state. We then describe measurements performed by our group on the millimeter wave response of DNA. By measuring over a wide range of humidity conditions and comparing the response of single strand DNA and double strand DNA, we show that the appreciable AC conductivity of DNA is not due to photon assisted hopping between localized states, but instead due to dissipation from dipole motion in the surrounding water helix.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

A broadband microwave Corbino spectrometer at 3^3He temperatures and high magnetic fields

We present the technical details of a broadband microwave spectrometer for measuring the complex conductance of thin films covering the range from 50 MHz up to 16 GHz in the temperature range 300 mK to 6 K and at applied magnetic fields up to 8 Tesla. We measure the complex reflection from a sample terminating a coaxial transmission line and calibrate the signals with three standards with known reflection coefficients. Thermal isolation of the heat load from the inner conductor is accomplished by including a section of NbTi superconducting cable (transition temperature around 8 $-$ 9 K) and hermetic seal glass bead adapters. This enables us to stabilize the base temperature of the sample stage at 300 mK. However, the inclusion of this superconducting cable complicates the calibration procedure. We document the effects of the superconducting cable on our calibration procedure and the effects of applied magnetic fields and how we control the temperature with great repeatability for each measurement. We have successfully extracted reliable data in this frequency, temperature and field range for thin superconducting films and highly resistive graphene samples