Interplay between energy dissipation and reservoir-induced thermalization in nonequilibrium quantum nanodevices

Abstract

A solid state electronic nanodevice is an intrinsically open quantum system, exchanging both energy with the host material and carriers with connected reservoirs. Its out-of-equilibrium behavior is determined by a non-trivial interplay between electronic dissipation and decoherence induced by inelastic processes within the device, and the coupling of the latter to metallic electrodes. We propose a unified description, based on the density matrix formalism, that accounts for both these aspects, enabling to predict various steady-state as well as ultrafast nonequilibrium phenomena, nowadays experimentally accessible. More specifically, we derive a generalized density-matrix equation, particularly suitable for the design and optimization of a wide class of electronic and optoelectronic quantum devices. The power and flexibility of this approach is demonstrated with the application to a photoexcited triple-barrier nanodevice.

5 pages, 3 figures

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Derivation of nonlinear single-particle equations via many-body Lindblad superoperators: A density-matrix approach
• Thermalization in Open Quantum Systems
• Interplay of different environments in open quantum systems: Breakdown of the additive approximation
• Scattering nonlocality in quantum charge transport: Application to semiconductor nanostructures
• Effect of assisted hopping on thermopower in an interacting quantum dot
• Wigner-function formalism applied to semiconductor quantum devices: Need for nonlocal scattering models
• Lindblad approach to spatio-temporal quantum dynamics of phonon-induced carrier capture processes
• Electronic Transport and Thermopower in 2D and 3D Heterostructures--A Theory Perspective
• Quantum diffusion due to scattering non-locality in nanoscale semiconductors
• Coherent charge and spin oscillations induced by local quenches in nanowires with spin-orbit coupling
• Nonequilibrium distribution functions in electron transport: Decoherence, energy redistribution and dissipation