Role of electronic structure in photoassisted transport through atomic-sized contacts

Abstract

We study theoretically quantum transport through laser-irradiated metallic atomic-sized contacts. The radiation field is treated classically, assuming its effect to be the generation of an ac voltage over the contact. We derive an expression for the dc current and compute the linear conductance in one-atom thick contacts as a function of the ac frequency, concentrating on the role played by electronic structure. In particular, we present results for three materials (Al, Pt, and Au) with very different electronic structures. It is shown that, depending on the frequency and the metal, the radiation can either enhance or diminish the conductance. This can be intuitively understood in terms of the energy dependence of the transmission of the contacts in the absence of radiation.

7 pages, 7 figures; four new figures added

References in corpus (4)

• Driven quantum transport on the nanoscale
• Current induced light emission and light induced current in molecular tunneling junctions
• Theoretical analysis of the conductance histograms and structural properties of Ag, Pt and Ni nanocontacts
• Superconducting atomic contacts under microwave irradiation

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• Modeling elastic and photoassisted transport in organic molecular wires: length dependence and current-voltage characteristics
• Linear optical response of current-carrying molecular junction: A NEGF-TDDFT approach
• Photoconductance of organic single-molecule contacts
• Thermal conductance of metallic atomic-size contacts: Phonon transport and Wiedemann-Franz law
• Optical Rectification and Thermal Currents in Optical Tunneling Gap Antennas
• Phononic heat conductance of gold atomic contacts: Coherent versus incoherent transport