English

Coherent transport in disordered metals out of equilibrium

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2009-11-07 v1

Abstract

We derive a formula for the quantum corrections to the electrical current for a metal out of equilibrium. In the limit of linear current-voltage characteristics our formula reproduces the well known Altshuler-Aronov correction to the conductivity of a disordered metal. The current formula is obtained by a direct diagrammatic approach, and is shown to agree with what is obtained within the Keldysh formulation of the non-linear sigma model. As an application we calculate the current of a mesoscopic wire. We find a current-voltage characteristics that scales with eV/kTeV/kT, and calculate the different scaling curves for a wire in the hot-electron regime and in the regime of full non-equilibrium.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0106238,
  title  = {Coherent transport in disordered metals out of equilibrium},
  author = {P. Schwab and R. Raimondi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0106238},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

16 pages, 13 figures