Mesoscopic Transport: The Electron-Gas Sum Rules in a Driven Quantum Point Contact

A discussion of recent work on time-dependent transport in mesoscopic structures is presented. The discussion emphasizes the use of time-dependent transport to gain information on the charge distribution and its collective dynamics. We discuss the RC-time of mesoscopic capacitors, the dynamic conductance of quantum point contacts and dynamic weak localization effects in chaotic cavities. We review work on adiabatic quantum pumping and photon-assisted transport, and conclude w...

The field of Quantum Chaos, addressing the quantum manifestations of an underlying classically chaotic dynamics, was developed in the early eighties, mainly from a theoretical perspective. Few experimental systems were initially recognized to exhibit the versatility of being sensitive, at the same time, to their classical and quantum dynamics. Rydberg atoms provided the main testing ground of Quantum Chaos concepts until the early nineties, marked by the development of microw...

Review article on equilibrium properties of mesoscopic quantum conductors.

We present an approach to steady-state mesoscopic transport based on the maximum entropy principle formulation of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. Our approach is not limited to the linear response regime. We show that this approach yields the quantization observed in the integer quantum Hall effect at large currents, which until now has been unexplained. We also predict new behaviors of non-local resistances at large currents in the presence of dirty contacts.

Where, and how, does energy dissipation of electrical energy take place in a ballistic wire? Fully two decades after the advent of the transmissive phenomenology of electrical conductance, this deceptively simple query remains unanswered. We revisit the quantum kinetic basis of dissipation and show its power to give a definitive answer to our query. Dissipation leaves a clear, quantitative trace in the non-equilibrium current noise of a quantum point contact; this signature h...

In this paper I present a pedagogical derivation of continuity equations manifesting exact conservation laws in an interacting electronic system based on the nonequilibrium Keldysh technique. The purpose of this exercise is to lay the groundwork for extending the hydrodynamic approach to electronic transport to strongly correlated systems where the quasiparticle approximation and Boltzmann kinetic theory fail.

Quantum dots are small conducting devices containing up to several thousand electrons. We focus here on closed dots whose single-electron dynamics are mostly chaotic. The mesoscopic fluctuations of the conduction properties of such dots reveal the effects of one-body chaos, quantum coherence and electron-electron interactions.

Quantum transport in mesoscopic conductors is essentially governed by the laws of quantum mechanics. One of the major open questions of quantum mechanics is what happens if non-commuting observables are measured simultaneously. Since current operators at different times do not commute, the high-frequency correlation functions of the current are realization of this fundamental quantum question. We formulate this problem in the context of measurements of finite-frequency curren...

In this short paper we first give a very simple derivation of the Landauer formula for a 2-point conductance of QJ $G^{2P}$, based on the uncertainty principle. The aim of this is to introduce this central equation of quantum transport to a general audience. Next we analyse the dynamics of setting up a steady-state current in a simple many-electron system and use these observations to present physical basis and formal result for the 4-point conductance $G^{4P}$, rigorously re...

We study the many-body electronic state created by a time-dependent drive of a mesoscopic contact. The many-body state is expressed manifestly in terms of single-electron and electron-hole quasiparticle excitations with the amplitudes and probabilities of creation which depend on the details of the applied voltage. We experimentally probe the time dependence of the constituent electronic states by using an analog of the optical Hong-Ou-Mandel correlation experiment where elec...