Are current discontinuities in molecular devices experimentally observable?
Abstract
An ongoing debate in the first-principles description of conduction in molecular devices concerns the correct definition of current in the presence of non-local potentials. If the physical current density is not locally conserved but can be re-adjusted by a non-local term, which current should be regarded as real? We prove that the extended Maxwell equations by Aharonov-Bohm give the e.m.\ field generated by such currents without any ambiguity. For an oscillating dipole we show that the radiated electrical field has a longitudinal component proportional to , where is the anomalous moment and is the space-dependent part of the anomaly . In the case of a stationary current in a molecular device, a failure of local current conservation causes a "missing field" effect that can be experimentally observable, especially if its entity depends on the total current.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2104.14342,
title = {Are current discontinuities in molecular devices experimentally observable?},
author = {F. Minotti and G. Modanese},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2104.14342},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
22 pages, 5 figures