Quantum transport using the Ford-Kac-Mazur formalism

TL;DR

This paper applies the Ford-Kac-Mazur formalism to analyze quantum transport in electronic and harmonic oscillator systems, providing exact results and insights into how reservoirs influence transport properties.

Contribution

It demonstrates the ease of implementing the formalism for non-interacting systems and derives exact results on electrical and thermal transport in disordered wires.

Findings

Reservoir and contact effects significantly influence transport properties.

Exact results on electrical and thermal conductance in disordered wires.

Comparison with nonequilibrium Green function methods confirms the formalism's effectiveness.

Abstract

The Ford-Kac-Mazur formalism is used to study quantum transport in (1) electronic and (2) harmonic oscillator systems connected to general reservoirs. It is shown that for non-interacting systems the method is easy to implement and is used to obtain many exact results on electrical and thermal transport in one-dimensional disordered wires. Some of these have earlier been obtained using nonequilibrium Green function methods. We examine the role that reservoirs and contacts can have on determining the transport properties of a wire and find several interesting effects.