2 research outputs found
Electronic transport in inhomogeneous quantum wires
We study the transport properties of a long non-uniform quantum wire where
the electron-electron interactions and the density vary smoothly at large
length scales. We show that these inhomogeneities lead to a finite resistivity
of the wire, due to a weak violation of momentum conservation in the collisions
between electrons. Estimating the rate of change of momentum associated with
non-momentum-conserving scattering processes, we derive the expression for the
resistivity of the wire in the regime of weakly interacting electrons and find
a contribution linear in temperature for a broad range of temperatures below
the Fermi energy. By estimating the energy dissipated throughout the wire by
low-energy excitations, we then develop a different method for deriving the
resistivity of the wire, which can be combined with the bosonization formalism.
This allows us to compare our results with previous works relying on an
extension of the Tomonaga-Luttinger model to inhomogeneous systems.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures. Invited paper for special issue of Journal of
Physics: Condensed Matter on "The 0.7 Feature and Interactions in
One-dimensional Systems