Shaping electronic flows with strongly correlated physics

Abstract

Nonequilibrium quantum transport is of central importance in nanotechnology. Its description requires the understanding of strong electronic correlations, which couple atomic-scale phenomena to the nanoscale. So far, research in correlated transport focused predominantly on few-channel transport, precluding the investigation of cross-scale effects. Recent theoretical advances enable the solution of models that capture the interplay between quantum correlations and confinement beyond a few channels. This problem is the focus of this study. We consider an atomic impurity embedded in a metallic nanosheet spanning two leads, showing that transport is significantly altered by tuning only the phase of a single, local hopping parameter. Furthermore -- depending on this phase -- correlations reshape the electronic flow throughout the sheet, either funneling it through the impurity or scattering it away from a much larger region. This demonstrates the potential for quantum correlations to bridge length scales in the design of nanoelectronic devices and sensors.