Abstract
The Landauer-Büttiker approach is used to describe electron transport along a chain of scatterers which allow elastic as well as inelastic processes. The inelastic scattering takes place via side branches coupling the chain to electron reservoirs which serve as a heat bath. For small inelastic coupling of the scatterers to the heat bath strong interference effects lead to spatial fluctuations of the charge density. The corresponding oscillations of the chemical potential are discussed in view of phase-sensitive experiments measuring the four-probe resistance.
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The chemical potential oscillations in [14] are also dampened by inelastic scattering. This can be seen by determining the chemical potentials up to the first order in the scattering parameter ε
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Schreiber, M., Maschke, K. Spatial fluctuations of the chemical potential in case of nearly coherent transport along an ordered chain. Z. Physik B - Condensed Matter 85, 123–128 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01387797
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01387797