2001/12/18 by Markus Buttiker, M Büttiker · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Surface and Thin Film Phenomena #Topological Materials and Phenomena #cond-mat.mes-hall
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/s12043-002-0011-3
published as Pramana-J. Phys. 58, 241-257 (2002) · 10 pages, 2 figures
arxiv created 2001/12/18 · openalex publication_date 2002/02/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We introduce a hierarchy of density of states to characterize the charge distribution in a mesoscopic conductor. At the bottom of this hierarchy are the partial density of states which represent the contribution to the local density of states if both the incident and the out-going scattering channel is prescribed. The partial density of states play a prominent role in measurements with a scanning tunneling microscope on multiprobe conductors in the presence of current flow. The partial density of states determine the degree of dephasing generated by a weakly coupled voltage probe. In addition the partial density of states determine the frequency-dependent response of mesoscopic conductors in the presence of slowly oscillating voltages applied to the contacts of the sample. The partial density of states permit the formulation of a Friedel sum rule which can be applied locally. We introduce the off-diagonal elements of the partial density of states matrix to describe charge fluctuation processes. This generalization leads to a local Wigner-Smith life-time matrix.