Observation of Persistent Currents in Mesoscopic Connected Rings

We report measurements of the low temperature magnetic response of a line of 16 GaAs/GaAlAs \emph{connected} mesoscopic rings whose total length is much larger than $l_{\varphi }$. Using an on-chip micro-$\text{textsc}squid$ technology, we have measured a periodic response, with period $h\mathrm{/}e$, corresponding to persistent currents in the rings of typical amplitude $0.40\pm 0.08nA$ per ring. Direct comparison with measurements on the same rings but \emph{isolated} is presented.