Wednesday, 18 March, 2009
Conductance of Fully Equilibrated Quantum Wires
J. Rech, T. Micklitz, and K. A. Matveev -
Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 116402 (2009)
We study the conductance of a quantum wire in the presence of weak electron-electron scattering. In a sufficiently long wire the scattering leads to full equilibration of the electron distribution function in the frame moving with the electric current. At nonzero temperature this equilibrium distribution differs from the one supplied by the leads. As a result the contact resistance increases, and the quantized conductance of the wire acquires a quadratic in temperature correction. The magnitude of the correction is found by analysis of the conservation laws of the system and does not depend on the details of the interaction mechanism responsible for equilibration.