Effect of temperature and bias voltage on the conductance distribution of disordered 1d quantum wires

Abstract

The statistical properties of the conductance of one dimensional disordered systems are studied at finite bias voltage V and temperature T, in an independent-electron picture. We calculate the complete distribution of the conductance P(G) in different regimes of V, T within a statistical model of resonant tunneling transmission. We find that P(G) changes from the well-known log-normal distribution at T=0 in the linear response regime to a Gaussian distribution at large V, T. The dependence on T and V of average quantities such as < G >, < ln G > is analyzed as well. Our analytical results are confirmed by numerical simulations. We also discuss the limits of validity of the model and conclude that the effects of finite T, V presented here should be observable.