0511137v3

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Hall of Mirrors Scattering from an Impurity in a Quantum Wire

J. Y. Vaishnav, A. Itsara, E. J. Heller

abstract: This paper develops a scattering theory to examine how point impurities affect transport through quantum wires. While some of our new results apply specifically to hard-walled wires, others--for example, an effective optical theorem for two-dimensional waveguides--are more general. We apply the method of images to the hard-walled guide, explicitly showing how scattering from an impurity affects the wire's conductance. We express the effective cross section of a confined scatterer entirely in terms of the empty waveguide's Green's function, suggesting a way in which to use semiclassical methods to understand transport properties of smooth wires. In addition to predicting some new phenomena, our approach provides a simple physical picture for previously observed effects such as conductance dips and confinement-induced resonances.

oai_identifier:
oai:arXiv.org:quant-ph/0511137
categories:
quant-ph cond-mat.mes-hall
comments:
19 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review B. Minor additions to text, added references
doi:
10.1103/PhysRevB.73.115331
arxiv_id:
quant-ph/0511137
journal_ref:
Phys. Rev. B 73, 115331 (2006)
created:
2005-11-15
updated:
2006-02-21

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