Joining Landauer approach and classical multi electronic master-equation description in nanoscale transport for non-interactive systems

Abstract

In this work we show that in the non-interacting limit, i.e., when the electronic structure of the N-particle states is frozen, in the wide-band limit (WBL) approximation, the classical master equation (CME) with the electron transfer rates obtained via Fermi golden rule and the elastic scattering approach (ES) are equivalent. This fact is encouraging, since it allows the insertion of elastic mechanisms into quantum transport via the CME approach thus, describing weak and strong quantum transport regimes on an equal footing within this theory.