The problem of phase breaking in the electronic conduction in mesoscopic systems: a linear-response theory approach
Abstract
We study the problem of electronic conduction in mesoscopic systems when the electrons are allowed to interact not only with static impurities, but also with a scatterer (a phase breaker(PB)) that possesses internal degrees of freedom. We first analyze the role of the PB in reducing the coherent interference effects in a one-electron quantum-mechanical system. In the many-electron system we can make a number of quite general statements within the framework of linear-response theory and the random-phase approximation. We cannot calculate the conductivity tensor in full generality: we thus resort to a model, in which that tensor can be expressed entirely in a single-electron picture. The resulting zero-temperature conductance can be written in terms of the total transmission coefficient at the Fermi energy, containing an additional trace over the states of the PB.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9907496,
title = {The problem of phase breaking in the electronic conduction in mesoscopic systems: a linear-response theory approach},
author = {Pier A. Mello and Yoseph Imry and Boris Shapiro},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9907496},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
12 pages, 1 figure. Submitted to Phys. Rev. B