Admittance and Nonlinear Transport in Quantum Wires, Point Contacts, and Resonant Tunneling Barriers

Abstract

We present a discussion of the admittance (ac-conductance) and nonlinear I-V-characteristic for a number of mesoscopic conductors. Our approach is based on a generalization of the scattering approach which now includes the effects of the (long-range) Coulomb interaction. We discuss the admittance of a wire with an impurity and with a nearby gate. We extend a discussion of the low-frequency admittance of a quantum point contact to investigate the effects of the gates used to form the contact. We discuss the nonlinear I-V characteristic of a resonant double barrier structure and discuss the admittance for the double barrier for a large range of frequencies. Our approach emphasizes the overall conservation of charge (gauge invariance) and current conservation and the resulting sum rules for the admittance matrix and nonlinear transport coefficients.