Effects of internal and external decoherence on the resonant transport and Anderson localization of fermionic particles in the tight-binding chain

Abstract

We study effects of relaxation/decoherence processes on quantum transport of non-interacting Fermi particles across the tight-binding chain, where we distinguish between relaxation processes in the contacts (external decoherence) and those in the chain (internal decoherence). It is argued that relaxation processes in the contacts can essentially modify the resonant transmission as compared to the Landauer theory. We also address quantum transport in disordered chains. It is shown that external decoherence reduces conductance fluctuations but does not alter the Anderson localization length. This is in strong contrast with the effect of internal decoherence which is found to suppress the Anderson localization.