Transport through a clean one-dimensional wire of interacting electrons connected to semi-infinite leads is investigated using a bosonization approach. An incident electron is transmitted as a sequence of partial charges. The dc conductance is found to be entirely determined by the properties of the leads. The dynamic nonlocal conductivity is rigorously expressed in terms of the transmission. For abrupt variations of the interaction parameters at the junctions, the central wire acts as a Fabry-P\'erot resonator. When one of the connected wires has a tendencey towards superconducting order, partial Andreev reflection of an incident electron occurs.
We investigate transport through a finite interacting wire connected to noninteracting leads. The conductance of the pure wire is not renormalized by the interactions for any spatial variation of the interaction parameters
u,K, and not even for Coulomb interactions restricted to the wire. We rigorously relate the conductance to the transmission, that turns out to be perfect. If
K varies abruptly at the contacts, an electron incident on the wire is reflected into a series of partial spatially separated charges which sum up to unity. For attractive interactions, the reflection at the contact is similar to Andreev reflection on a gapless superconductor. This process affects the density-density or pairing correlation functions: they are enhanced on the bulk of the wire as in an infinite Luttinger liquid, then extend to the external noninteracting leads in a way reminiscent of the proximity effect. The effect of impurities is governed by the wire parameter but is affected by the leads close to the contacts. Our results give a possible explanation to recent experiments on quantum wires by Tarucha et al.
We investigate a one-dimensional wire of interacting electrons connected to one-dimensional noninteracting leads in the absence and in the presence of a backscattering potential. The ballistic wire separates the charge and spin parts of an incident electron even in the noninteracting leads. The Fourier transform of nonlocal correlation functions is computed for $T\ensuremath{\gg}\ensuremath{\omega}$. In particular, this allows to study the proximity effect, related to the Andreev reflection. In addition, a new type of proximity effect emerges when the wire has normally a tendency towards Wigner crystal formation. The latter is suppressed by the leads below a space-dependent crossover temperature; it gets dominated everywhere by the
2kF charge-density wave at $T<{L}^{(3/2)(K\ensuremath{-}1)}$ for short-range interactions with parameter
K<1/3. The lowest-order renormalization equations of a weak backscattering potential are derived explicitly at finite temperature. A perturbative expression for the conductance in the presence of a potential with arbitrary spatial extension is given. It depends on the interactions, but is also affected by the noninteracting leads, especially for very repulsive interactions,
K<1/3. This leads to various regimes, depending on temperature and on
K. For randomly distributed weak impurities, the conductance fluctuations, equal to that of $\mathcal{R}=g\ensuremath{-}{2e}^{2}/h$, are computed. They depend on the interaction parameters, and are different for electrons with or without spin. But the ratio
Var(R)/R2 stays always of the same order: it is equal to ${L}_{T}/L\ensuremath{\ll}1$ in the high-temperature limit, then saturates at
1/2 in the low-temperature limit, indicating that the relative fluctuations of
R are universal.
We use the technique of bosonization to understand a variety of recent experimental results on the conductivity of a quantum wire. The quantum wire is taken to be a finite-length Luttinger liquid connected on two sides to semi-infinite Fermi liquids through contacts. The contacts are modeled as (short) Luttinger liquids bounded by localized one-body potentials. We use effective actions and the renormalization group to study the effects of electronic interactions within the wire, the length of the wire, finite temperature, and a magnetic field, on the conductivity. We explain the deviations of the conductivity from
2Ne2/h in wires that are not too short as arising from renormalization effects caused by the repulsive interactions. We also explain the universal conductance corrections observed in different channels at higher temperatures. We study the effects of an external magnetic field on electronic transport through this system and explain why odd and even spin-split bands show different renormalizations from the universal conductance values. We discuss the case of resonant transmission and of the possibility of producing a spin valve that only allows electrons of one value of the spin to go through. We compare our results for the conductance corrections with experimental observations. We also propose an experimental test of our model of the contact regions.
We study transport through a one-dimensional quantum wire of correlated fermions connected to semi-infinite leads. The wire contains either a single impurity or two barriers, the latter allowing for resonant tunneling. In the leads the fermions are assumed to be noninteracting. The wire is described by a microscopic lattice model. Using the functional renormalization group we calculate the linear conductance for wires of mesoscopic length and for all relevant temperature scales. For a single impurity, either strong or weak, we find power-law behavior as a function of temperature. In addition, we can describe the complete crossover from the weak- to the strong-impurity limit. For two barriers, depending on the parameters of the enclosed quantum dot, we find temperature regimes in which the conductance follows power laws with ``universal'' exponents as well as nonuniversal behavior. Our approach leads to a comprehensive picture of resonant tunneling. We compare our results with those of alternative approaches.
The transport in a pure one-dimensional quantum wire is investigated for any range of interactions. First, the wire is connected to measuring leads. The transmission of an incident electron is found to be perfect, i.e., the conductance is not renormalized by the interactions. Either Landauer's approach or the Kubo formula can be used as long as the reservoirs impose the boundary conditions. Second, the Kubo formula as a response to the local field is reconsidered in a generic Luttinger liquid: the ``intrinsic'' conductance thus obtained is determined by the same combination of interaction parameters as that which renormalizes the current.