Nonlinear conductance of long quantum wires at a conductance plateau transition: Where does the voltage drop?

Abstract

We calculate the linear and nonlinear conductance of spinless fermions in clean, long quantum wires where short-ranged interactions lead locally to equilibration. Close to the quantum phase transition where the conductance jumps from zero to one conductance quantum, the conductance obtains an universal form governed by the ratios of temperature, bias voltage and gate voltage. Asymptotic analytic results are compared to solutions of a Boltzmann equation which includes the effects of three-particle scattering. Surprisingly, we find that for long wires the voltage predominantly drops close to one end of the quantum wire due to a thermoelectric effect.

4+ pages, 3 figures plus supplementary material (2 pages, 1 figure); minor changes, references corrected

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Cited by in corpus (9)

• A thermoelectric heat engine with ultracold atoms
• Thermoelectric transport and Peltier cooling of cold atomic gases
• Dissipationless kinetics of one dimensional interacting fermions
• Steady-state properties of a thermodynamically unbalanced Fermi gas
• Statistical theory of relaxation of high energy electrons in quantum Hall edge states
• Dynamical Coulomb Blockade in an interacting 1D system coupled to an arbitrary environment
• Collision-dominated conductance in clean 2D metals
• Kinetic processes in Fermi-Luttinger liquids
• Fate of the Quasi-condensed State for Bias-driven Hard-Core Bosons in one Dimension