English

Mathematical aspects of the Kubo formula for electrical conductivity with dissipation

Mathematical Physics 2023-08-15 v2 math.MP

Abstract

In this expository article, we present a systematic formal derivation of the Kubo formula for the linear-response current due to a time-harmonic electric field applied to non-interacting, spinless charged particles in a finite volume in the quantum setting. We model dissipation in a transparent way by assuming a sequence of scattering events occurring at random-time intervals modeled by a Poisson distribution. By taking the large-volume limit, we derive special cases of the formula for free electrons, continuum and tight-binding periodic systems, and the nearest-neighbor tight-binding model of graphene. We present the analogous formalism with dissipation to derive the Drude conductivity of classical free particles.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2304.04303,
  title  = {Mathematical aspects of the Kubo formula for electrical conductivity with dissipation},
  author = {Alexander B. Watson and Dionisios Margetis and Mitchell Luskin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.04303},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

35 pages. Small corrections and improvements to exposition