Transport in nanoscale systems: the microcanonical versus grand-canonical picture

Abstract

We analyse a picture of transport in which two large but finite charged electrodes discharge across a nanoscale junction. We identify a functional whose minimisation, within the space of all bound many-body wavefunctions, defines an instantaneous steady state. We also discuss factors that favour the onset of steady-state conduction in such systems, make a connection with the notion of entropy, and suggest a novel source of steady-state noise. Finally, we prove that the true many-body total current in this closed system is given exactly by the one-electron total current, obtained from time-dependent density-functional theory.

6 pages, 1 figure

References in corpus (3)

• Time-Dependent Partition-Free Approach in Resonant Tunneling Systems
• Time-dependent quantum transport: an exact formulation based on TDDFT
• Maximum-entropy theory of steady-state quantum transport

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