Transport properties of partially equilibrated quantum wires

TL;DR

This paper investigates how thermal equilibration influences transport in weakly interacting quantum wires, revealing finite temperature conductance corrections and exceptional thermoelectric efficiency in long wires.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of partial thermal equilibration effects on conductance and thermoelectric properties in quantum wires, highlighting new length-dependent behaviors and efficiency limits.

Findings

Finite temperature correction to conductance scales with wire length

Conductance saturates in very long wires, becoming length-independent

Long quantum wires can act as near-perfect thermoelectric refrigerators

Abstract

We study the effect of thermal equilibration on the transport properties of a weakly interacting one-dimensional electron system. Although equilibration is severely suppressed due to phase-space restrictions and conservation laws, it can lead to intriguing signatures in partially equilibrated quantum wires. We consider an ideal homogeneous quantum wire. We find a finite temperature correction to the quantized conductance, which for a short wire scales with its length, but saturates to a length-independent value once the wire becomes exponentially long. We also discuss thermoelectric properties of long quantum wires. We show that the uniform quantum wire is a perfect thermoelectric refrigerator, approaching Carnot efficiency with increasing wire length.