Conductance of Aharonov--Bohm Rings: From the Discrete to the Continuous Spectrum Limit

The dissipative conductance of an array of mesoscopic rings, subject to an a.c. magnetic flux is investigated. The magneto--conductance may change sign between canonical and grand-canonical statistical ensembles, as function of the inelastic level broadening and as function of the temperature. Differences between canonical and grand-canonical ensembles persist up to temperature of the order of the Thouless energy.