A Landauer transport formulation with inelastic scattering

TL;DR

This paper extends the Landauer transport model to include inelastic scattering with dynamic energy levels, providing a unified approach using scattering theory, Kubo response, and Keldysh techniques.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized Landauer formula incorporating inelastic scattering and demonstrates equivalence of different theoretical approaches.

Findings

Derived a conductance expression with inelastic scattering cross sections

Showed unitarity leads to consistent results across methods

Unified scattering, Kubo, and Keldysh formalisms

Abstract

The Landauer transport formulation is generalized to the case of a dynamic scatterer with an arbitrary energy level structure, weakly coupled to a long ideal noninteracting wire. The two-terminal linear conductance of the device is expressed in terms of the (in general inelastic) scattering cross sections of the electrons off the scatterer, using a Fermi-liquid picture for the scattering states of the whole system. Assuming unitarity, i.e. the optical theorem, we obtain the same results from a Kubo linear response treatment and from a Keldysh technique approach.