  We calculate the conductance of quasi-one-dimensional nanowires with
electronic states confined to a surface charge layer, in the presence of a
uniform magnetic field. Two-terminal magnetoconductance (MC) between two leads
deposited on the nanowire via tunnel barriers is dominated by density-of-states
(DOS) singularities, when the leads are well apart. There is also a mesoscopic
correction due to a higher-order coherent tunneling between the leads for small
lead separation. The corresponding MC structure depends on the interference
between electron propagation via different channels connecting the leads, which
in the simplest case, for the magnetic field along the wire axis, can be
crudely characterized by relative winding numbers of paths enclosing the
magnetic flux. In general, the MC oscillations are aperiodic, due to the Zeeman
splitting, field misalignment with the wire axis, and a finite extent of
electron distribution across the wire cross section, and are affected by
spin-orbit coupling. The quantum-interference MC traces contain a wealth of
information about the electronic structure of multichannel wires, which would
be complimentary to the DOS measurements. We propose a four-terminal
configuration to enhance the relative contribution of the higher-order
tunneling processes and apply our results to realistic InAs nanowires carrying
several quantum channels in the surface charge-accumulation layer.
