title: Improved Dyson series expansion for steady-state quantum transport beyond the weak coupling limit: divergences and resolution.
abstract: We present a general theory to calculate the steady-state heat and electronic currents for nonlinear systems using a perturbative expansion in the system-bath coupling. We explicitly demonstrate that using the truncated Dyson-series leads to divergences in the steady-state limit, thus making it impossible to be used for actual applications. In order to resolve the divergences, we propose a unique choice of initial condition for the reduced density matrix, which removes the divergences at each order. Our approach not only allows us to use the truncated Dyson-series, with a reasonable choice of initial condition, but also gives the expected result that the steady-state solutions should be independent of initial preparations. Using our improved Dyson series we evaluate the heat and electronic currents up to fourth-order in system-bath coupling, a considerable improvement over the standard quantum master equation techniques. We then numerically corroborate our theory for archetypal settings of linear systems using the exact nonequilibrium Green's function approach. Finally, to demonstrate the advantage of our approach, we deal with the nonlinear spin-boson model to evaluate heat current up to fourth-order and find signatures of cotunnelling process.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physics, University of Augsburg, Universitätsstrasse 1 D-86135 Augsburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Juzar
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Thingna
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Centre for Computational Science and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117551, Republic of Singapore.
authors.forename: Hangbo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Centre for Computational Science and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117551, Republic of Singapore.
authors.forename: Jian-Sheng
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D004581:Electronics; D006358:Hot Temperature; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D011789:Quantum Theory