Eur. Phys. J. B 48, 243-247 (2005)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2005-00403-1

Interacting electron systems between Fermi leads: effective one-body transmissions and correlation clouds

¹ CEA/DSM, Service de Physique de l'État Condensé, Centre d'Études de Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
² Max-Planck-Institut für Physik Komplexer Systeme, Nöthnitzer Str. 38, 01187 Dresden, Germany
³ Institut de Physique et Chimie des Matériaux de Strasbourg, UMR 7504 (CNRS-ULP), 23 rue du Loess, BP 43, 67034 Strasbourg Cedex 2, France
⁴ Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modélisation, Université de Cergy-Pontoise, 95031 Cergy-Pontoise Cedex, France

Corresponding author: ^a Dietmar.Weinmann@ipcms.u-strasbg.fr

Received: 25 July 2005
Revised: 13 October 2005
Published online: 16 December 2005

Abstract

In order to extend the Landauer formulation of quantum transport to correlated fermions, we consider a spinless system in which charge carriers interact, connected to two reservoirs by non-interacting one-dimensional leads. We show that the mapping of the embedded many-body scatterer onto an effective one-body scatterer with interaction-dependent parameters requires to include parts of the attached leads where the interacting region induces power law correlations. Physically, this gives a dependence of the conductance of a mesoscopic scatterer upon the nature of the used leads which is due to electron interactions inside the scatterer. To show this, we consider two identical correlated systems connected by a non-interacting lead of length . We demonstrate that the effective one-body transmission of the ensemble deviates by an amount from the behavior obtained assuming an effective one-body description for each element and the combination law of scatterers in series. A is maximum for the interaction strength U around which the Luttinger liquid becomes a Mott insulator in the used model, and vanishes when and . Analogies with the Kondo problem are pointed out.