title: Nonequilibrium density-matrix description of steady-state quantum transport.
abstract: With this work we investigate the stationary nonequilibrium density matrix of current carrying nonequilibrium steady states of in-between quantum systems that are connected to reservoirs. We describe the analytical procedure to obtain the explicit result for the reduced density matrix of quantum transport when the system, the connecting reservoirs, and the system-reservoir interactions are described by quadratic Hamiltonians. Our procedure is detailed for both electronic transport described by the tight-binding Hamiltonian and for phonon transport described by harmonic Hamiltonians. For the special case of weak system-reservoir couplings, a more detailed description of the steady-state density matrix is obtained. Several paradigm transport setups for interelectrode electron transport and low-dimensional phonon heat flux are elucidated.
authors.affiliation: Raman Research Institute, Bangalore 560080, India.
authors.forename: Abhishek
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dhar
authors.forename: Keiji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Saito
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hänggi
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D003198:Computer Simulation; D008956:Models, Chemical; D008958:Models, Molecular; D011789:Quantum Theory