Non-equilibrium charge susceptibility and dynamical conductance: Identification of scattering processes in quantum transport

Abstract

We calculate the non-equilibrium charge transport properties of nanoscale junctions in the steady state and extend the concept of charge susceptibility to the non-equilibrium conditions. We show that the non-equilibrium charge susceptibility is related to the non-linear dynamical conductance. In spectroscopic terms, both contain the same features versus applied bias when charge fluctuation occurs in the corresponding electronic resonances. However, we show that while the conductance exhibits features at biases corresponding to inelastic scattering with no charge fluctuations, the non-equilibrium charge susceptibility does not. We suggest that measuring both the non-equilibrium conductance and charge susceptibility in the same experiment will permit us to differentiate between different scattering processes in quantum transport.