Comment on ``First-principles treatments of electron transport properties for nanoscale junctions''

We reply to the comment by Jung, Bokes, and Godby (arXiv:0706.0140) on our paper Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 186810 (2005). We show that the results in their comment should not be taken as an indication that the viscosity corrections to the conductance of real nanoscale structures are small. A more accurate treatment of the density and current density distribution and of the electronic correlations may yield much larger corrections in realistic systems.

A method for the calculation of the conductance of nanoscale electrical junctions is extended to ab-initio electronic structure methods and applied to realistic models of metallic wires and break-junctions of sodium and gold. The method is systematically controllable and convergeable, and can be straightforwardly extended to include more complex processes and interactions. Important issues about the order in which are taken both the thermodynamic and the static (small field) ...

We report the inclusion of electron-electron correlation in the calculation of transport properties within an ab initio scheme. A key step is the reformulation of Landauer's approach in terms of an effective transmittance for the interacting electron system. We apply this framework to analyze the effect of short range interactions on Pt atomic wires and discuss the coherent and incoherent correction to the mean-field approach.

We present a time-saving simulator within the framework of the density functional theory to calculate the transport properties of electrons through nanostructures suspended between semi-infinite electrodes. By introducing the Fourier transform and preconditioning conjugate-gradient algorithms into the simulator, a highly efficient performance can be achieved in determining scattering wave functions and electron-transport properties of nanostructures suspended between semi-inf...

We show, using a tight-binding model and time-dependent density-functional theory, that a quasi-steady state current can be established dynamically in a finite nanoscale junction without any inelastic effects. This is simply due to the geometrical constriction experienced by the electron wavepackets as they propagate through the junction. We also show that in this closed non-equilibrium system two local electron occupation functions can be defined on each side of the nanojunc...

Multishell helical gold nanowires (HGNs) suspended between semi-infinite electrodes are found to exhibit peculiar electron-conduction properties by first-principles calculations based on the density functional theory. Our results that the numbers of conduction channels in the HGNs and their conductances are smaller than those expected from a single-atom-row nanowire verify the recent experiment. In addition, we obtained a more striking result that in the cases of thin HGNs, d...

The quanta of electrical conductance is derived for a one-dimensional electron gas both by making use of the quasi-classical motion of a quantum fluid and by using arguments related to the uncertainty principle. The result is extended to a nanowire of finite cross-section area and to electrons in magnetic field, and the quantization of the electrical conductance is shown. An additional application is made to the two-dimensional electron gas.

Gold nanowires generated by mechanical stretching have been shown to adopt only three kinds of configurations where their atomic arrangements adjust such that either the [100], [111] or [110] zone axes lie parallel to the elongation direction. We have analyzed the relationship between structural rearrangements and electronic transport behavior during the elongation of Au nanowires for each of the three possibilities. We have used two independent experiments to tackle this pro...

We describe a first-principles method for calculating electronic structure, vibrational modes and frequencies, electron-phonon couplings, and inelastic electron transport properties of an atomic-scale device bridging two metallic contacts under nonequilibrium conditions. The method extends the density-functional codes SIESTA and TranSIESTA that use atomic basis sets. The inelastic conductance characteristics are calculated using the nonequilibrium Green's function formalism, ...

The electron current density in nanoscale junctions is typically several orders of magnitude larger than the corresponding one in bulk electrodes. Consequently, the electron-electron scattering rate increases substantially in the junction. This leads to local electron heating of the underlying Fermi sea in analogy to the local ionic heating that is due to the increased electron-phonon scattering rates. We predict the bias dependence of local electron heating in quasi-ballisti...