Charge pumping in a quantum wire driven by a series of local time-periodic potentials

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to analyze charge transport in quantum wires with time-periodic potentials, revealing current jumps at specific delays and nonzero pumping at zero phase difference, aligning with experimental observations.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel computational approach for quantum charge pumping in mesoscopic systems with time-periodic potentials, including new insights into phase difference effects.

Findings

Current jumps at Wigner delay time peaks

Consistent results in weak and strong pumping regimes

Nonzero pumping at zero phase difference

Abstract

We develop a method to calculate electronic transport properties through a mesoscopic scattering region in the presence of a series of time-periodic potentials. Using the method, the quantum charge pumping driven by time-periodic potentials is studied. Jumps in the pumped current are observed at the peak positions of the Wigner delay time. Our main results in both the weak pumping and strong pumping regimes are consistent with experimental results. More interestingly, we also observed the nonzero pumping at the phase difference phi=0 and addressed its relevance to the experimental result.