Mesoscopic Transport as Many-Body Physics

Abstract

We show that a completely orthodox and conserving Landau-Silin approach to current fluctuations in quantum point contacts accounts for the major, and as yet unexplained, peak structures observed in the QPC experiment of Reznikov et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 3340 (1995)], for constant values of source-drain current. Those features are absent from corresponding phenomenological predictions and are unanticipated by Landauer-Buettiker theory. The kinetic origin of the Reznikov et al. noise peaks directly manifests the action of the compressibility sum rule in the electron gas. This rule, in turn, is the outworking of microscopic gauge invariance.