NonEquilibrium Green Functions Applied to Transport: Mesoscopic Systems

Abstract

In this last chapter, the GF technique will be applied to the study of the electrical conduction of mesoscopic systems. Such a problem was already treated in Chap. 21, where Landauer theory established a relation between the conductance and the transmission coefficients of electron wavefunctions at the different leads connected to the system. Here, it will be shown how the GFs may be evaluated and used for the determination of the transmission coefficients. The method was introduced in the 1970s by several authors [94,95,305] and more recently extended by Datta in a number of papers and presented in an excellent book [116] that quickly became a standard reference for this subject. This chapter is totally based on that book.