Mesoscopic Transport as Many-Body Physics

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a standard Landau-Silin approach explains unexplained noise peaks in quantum point contact experiments, linking them to fundamental many-body physics principles like the compressibility sum rule and gauge invariance.

Contribution

It shows that a conserving Landau-Silin framework accounts for experimental noise features unexplainable by traditional theories, highlighting many-body effects in mesoscopic transport.

Findings

Landau-Silin approach explains noise peaks in QPCs

Noise features are linked to the compressibility sum rule

Results emphasize the importance of many-body physics in mesoscopic transport

Abstract

We show that a completely orthodox and conserving Landau-Silin approach to current fluctuations in quantum point contacts accounts for the major, and as yet unexplained, peak structures observed in the QPC experiment of Reznikov et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 3340 (1995)], for constant values of source-drain current. Those features are absent from corresponding phenomenological predictions and are unanticipated by Landauer-Buettiker theory. The kinetic origin of the Reznikov et al. noise peaks directly manifests the action of the compressibility sum rule in the electron gas. This rule, in turn, is the outworking of microscopic gauge invariance.