arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Frederick Green.
We give a short overview of the role of microscopic conservation in charge transport at small scales, and at driving fields beyond the linear-response limit. As a practical example we recall the measurement and theory of interband coupling effects in a quantum point contact driven far from equilibrium.
The diagrammatic analysis of interacting particle assemblies harbors a fundamental mismatch between two of its main implementations: Phi-derivable (conserving) approximations and parquet (crossing symmetric) models. No termwise expansion, short of the exact theory itself, can be both conserving and crossing symmetric. This work applies the Kraichnan embedded-Hamiltonian formalism for strongly coupled systems to investigate consistency of the interplay between purely pair-mediated correlations and pair-irreducible ones. The approach sheds a different light on the issue of crossing symmetry versus conservation. In the process, the parquet equations acquire a different formulation.
Understanding collective phenomena calls for tractable descriptions of correlations in assemblies of strongly interacting constituents. Capturing the essence of their self-consistency is central. The parquet theory admits a maximum level of self-consistency for strictly pairwise many-body correlations. While perturbatively based, the core of parquet and allied models is a set of strongly coupled nonlinear integral equations for all-order scattering; tightly constrained by crossing symmetry, they are nevertheless heuristic. Within a formalism due to Kraichnan, we present a Hamiltonian analysis of fermionic parquet's structure. The shape of its constitutive equations follows naturally from the resulting canonical description. We discuss the affinity between the derived conserving scattering amplitude and that of standard parquet. Whereas the Hamiltonian-derived model amplitude is microscopically conserving, it cannot preserve crossing symmetry. The parquet amplitude and its refinements preserve crossing symmetry, yet cannot safeguard conservation at any stage. Which amplitude should be used depends on physics rather than on theoretically ideal completeness.
Practical mesoscopic devices based on quantum point contacts (QPCs) must function at operating point involving large internal driving fields. Experimental evidence has accumulated to display anomalous nonlinear features of QPC response beyond the capacities of accepted tunnelling-based models of nonlinear quantum transport. Here we recall the physical setting of three anomalous QPC experiments and review how, for two of them, a microscopically based nonequilibrium quantum kinetic description (the correct physical boundary conditions being crucial) has already overcome the predictive limitations of standard nonequilibrium mesoscopic models. The third experiment remains a significant challenge to all theorists.
Microscopically conserving reduced models of many-body systems have a long, highly successful history. Established theories of this type are the random-phase approximation for Coulomb fluids and the particle-particle ladder model for nuclear matter. There are also more physically comprehensive approximations such as the induced-interaction and parquet theories. Notwithstanding their explanatory power, some theories have lacked an explicit Hamiltonian from which all significant system properties, static and dynamic, emerge canonically. This absence can complicate evaluation of the conserving sum rules, essential consistency checks on the validity of any model. In a series of papers Kraichnan introduced a stochastic embedding procedure to generate explicit Hamiltonians for common approximations for the full many-body problem. Existence of a Hamiltonian greatly eases the task of securing fundamental identities in such models. I revisit Kraichnan's method to apply it to correlation theories for which such a canonical framework has not been available. I exhibit Hamiltonians for more elaborate correlated models incorporating both long-range screening and short-range scattering phenomena. These are relevant to the study of strongly interacting electrons and condensed quantum systems broadly.
Over the last decade, interest in one-dimensional charge transport has progressed from the seminal discovery of Landauer quantization of conductance, as a function of carrier density, to finer-scale phenomena at the onset of quantization. This has come to be called the "0.7 anomaly", rather connoting a theoretical mystery of some profundity and universality, which remains open to date. Its somewhat imaginative appellation may tend to mislead, since the anomaly manifests itself over a range of conductance values: anywhere between 0.25 to 0.95 Landauer quanta. In this paper we offer a critique of the 0.7 anomaly and discuss the extent to which it represents a deep question of physics.
We report on a striking departure from the canonical step sequence of quantized conductance in a ballistic, quasi-one-dimensional metallic channel. Ideally, in such a structure, each sub-band population contributes its Landauer conductance quantum independently of the rest. In a picture based exclusively on coherent single-carrier transmission, unitary back-scattering can lower a conductance step below ideal, but it is absolutely impossible for it to enhance the ideal Landauer conductance of a sub-band. Precisely such an anomalous and robust nonlinear enhancement has already been observed over the whole density range between sub-band thresholds (de Picciotto R et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 036805 (2004) and J. Phys. Condens. Matter 20, 164204 (2008)). We show theoretically that the anomalous enhancement of ideal Landauer conductance is the hallmark of carrier transitions coupling the discrete sub-bands.
The Fermi surface is an abstract object in the reciprocal space of a crystal lattice, enclosing the set of all those electronic band states that are filled according to the Pauli principle. Its topology is dictated by the underlying lattice structure and its volume is the carrier density in the material. The Fermi surface is central to predictions of thermal, electrical, magnetic, optical and superconducting properties in metallic systems. Density functional theory is a first-principles method used to estimate the occupied-band energies and, in particular, the iso-energetic Fermi surface. In this review we survey several key facts about Fermi surfaces in complex systems, where a proper theoretical understanding is still lacking. We address some critical difficulties.
The recent article "Ohm's Law Survives to the Atomic Scale" by Weber et al. [Science 335, 64 (1021)] reveals ohmic transport in quantized P-in-Si wires. We argue that their results have two main deficiencies: (a) the interpretation of conductance data is inadequate for serious systematics; (b) metallic-like structures hold few implications for quantum computing.
Models of nonequilibrium quantum transport underpin all modern electronic devices, from the largest scales to the smallest. Past simplifications such as coarse graining and bulk self-averaging served well to understand electronic materials. Such particular notions become inapplicable at mesoscopic dimensions, edging towards the truly quantum regime. Nevertheless a unifying thread continues to run through transport physics, animating the design of small-scale electronic technology: microscopic conservation and nonequilibrium dissipation. These fundamentals are inherent in quantum transport and gain even greater and more explicit experimental meaning in the passage to atomic-sized devices. We review their genesis, their theoretical context, and their governing role in the electronic response of meso- and nanoscopic systems.
Having driven a large part of the decade's progress in physics, nanoelectronics is now passing from today's realm of the extraordinary to tomorrow's commonplace. This carries the problem of turning proofs of concept into practical artefacts. Better and more sharply focussed predictive modelling will be the ultimate guide to optimising mesoscopic technology as it matures. Securing this level of understanding needs a reassessment of the assumptions at the base of the present state of the field. We offer a brief overview of the underlying assumptions of mesoscopic transport.
Where, and how, does energy dissipation of electrical energy take place in a ballistic wire? Fully two decades after the advent of the transmissive phenomenology of electrical conductance, this deceptively simple query remains unanswered. We revisit the quantum kinetic basis of dissipation and show its power to give a definitive answer to our query. Dissipation leaves a clear, quantitative trace in the non-equilibrium current noise of a quantum point contact; this signature has already been observed in the laboratory. We then highlight the current state of accepted understandings in the light of well-known yet seemingly contradictory measurements. The physics of mesoscopic transport rests not in coherent carrier transmission through a perfect and dissipationless metallic channel, but explicitly in their dissipative inelastic scattering at the wire's interfaces and adjacent macroscopic leads.
We remark on some delicate points that attend the physical meaning of intrinsic device resistance.
In the ballistic limit, the Landauer conductance steps of a mesoscopic quantum wire have been explained by coherent and dissipationless transmission of individual electrons across a one-dimensional barrier. This leaves untouched the central issue of conduction: a quantum wire, albeit ballistic, has finite resistance and so must dissipate energy. Exactly HOW does the quantum wire shed its excess electrical energy? We show that the answer is provided, uniquely, by many-body quantum kinetics. Not only does this inevitably lead to universal quantization of the conductance, in spite of dissipation; it fully resolves a baffling experimental result in quantum-point-contact noise. The underlying physics rests crucially upon the action of the conservation laws in these open metallic systems.
The understanding of mesoscopic transport has now attained an ultimate simplicity. Indeed, orthodox quantum kinetics would seem to say little about mesoscopics that has not been revealed - nearly effortlessly - by more popular means. Such is far from the case, however. The fact that kinetic theory remains very much in charge is best appreciated through the physics of a quantum point contact. While discretization of its conductance is viewed as the exclusive result of coherent, single-electron-wave transmission, this does not begin to address the paramount feature of all metallic conduction: dissipation. A perfect quantum point contact still has finite resistance, so its ballistic carriers must dissipate the energy gained from the applied field. How do they manage that? The key is in standard many-body quantum theory, and its conservation principles.
The standard physical model of contemporary mesoscopic noise and transport consists in a phenomenologically based approach, proposed originally by Landauer and since continued and amplified by Buettiker (and others). Throughout all the years of its gestation and growth, it is surprising that the Landauer-Buettiker approach to mesoscopics has matured with scant attention to the conservation properties lying at its roots: that is, at the level of actual microscopic principles. We systematically apply the conserving sum rules for the electron gas to clarify this fundamental issue within the standard phenomenology of mesoscopic conduction. Noise, as observed in quantum point contacts, provides the vital clue.
Reznikov et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 3340 (1995)) have presented definitive observations of nonequilibrium noise in a quantum point contact. Especially puzzling is the "anomalous" peak structure of the excess noise measured at constant current; to date it remains unexplained. We show that their experiment directly reveals the deep link between conservation principles in the electron gas and its low-dimensional, mesoscopic behavior. Key to that connection are gauge invariance and the compressibility sum rule. These are central not only to the experiment of Reznikov et al. but to the very nature of all mesoscopic transport.
We summarize the main results of a microscopically based kinetic theory, applicable to open quantum point contacts (QPCs) driven up to high fields. The governing role of gauge invariance -- and the many-body sum rules for the electron gas -- lead to stringent constraints on both transport and fluctuations. These constraints exert a dominant influence on the observable properties of QPCs and similar open mesoscopic conductors. We illustrate this in the context of certain predictions within purely phenomenological models of mesoscopic transport.