Resonant transmission of fermionic carriers: Comparison between solid-state physics and quantum optics approaches

Abstract

We revisit the phenomenon of the resonant transmission of fermionic carriers through a quantum device connected to two contacts with different chemical potentials. We show that, besides the traditional Landauer-B\"uttiker approach in solid-state physics, this phenomenon can also be described by the non-Markovian master equation for the reduced density matrix of the fermions in the quantum device. We identify validity regions for both approaches in the system parameter space and argue that for large relaxation rates the accuracy of the latter approach greatly exceeds the accuracy of the former.