Electron turbulence at nanoscale junctions

Abstract

Electron transport through a nanostructure can be characterized in part using concepts from classical fluid dynamics. It is thus natural to ask how far the analogy can be taken, and whether the electron liquid can exhibit nonlinear dynamical effects such as turbulence. Here we present an ab-initio study of the electron dynamics in nanojunctions which reveals that the latter indeed exhibits behavior quite similar to that of a classical fluid. In particular, we find that a transition from laminar to turbulent flow occurs with increasing current, corresponding to increasing Reynolds numbers. These results reveal unexpected features of electron dynamics and shed new light on our understanding of transport properties of nanoscale systems.

5 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Approach to steady state transport in nanoscale conductors
• Microscopic Current Dynamics in Nanoscale Junctions
• Local electron heating in nanoscale conductors
• Hydrodynamic approach to transport and quantum turbulence in nanoscale conductors

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Incompleteness of the Landauer Formula for Electronic Transport
• The Driven Liouville von Neumann Equation in Lindblad Form
• Local electron and ionic heating effects on the conductance of nanostructures
• Turbulence-induced magnetic flux asymmetry at nanoscale junctions
• Gibbs phenomenon and the emergence of the steady-state in quantum transport
• Quantum-statistics-induced flow patterns in driven ideal Fermi gases