Non-Ohmic Phonon-Assisted Landauer Resistance

Abstract

Previously (Gurevich et al., 1994a), we considered phonon scattering on ballistic conductance. In other words, we assumed that the applied voltage was sufficiently small that both the basic part of the resistance and the phonon-controlled part satisfied Ohm’s law. Here, we give a brief account of investigations of the hot-electron regime for the phonon-controlled part of the current. By hot electron, one usually refers to the situation where the electron energy is larger than k _B T, where T is the lattice temperature. In a ballistic situation, we have two counterflows of electrons moving in opposite directions (Beenakker and van Houten, 1991). Both of these streams are described by the equilibrium Fermi-Dirac distributions, but at two different values of the chemical potentials so that the difference between these is eV, where V is the applied voltage. One can then expect hot-electron phenomena in a ballistic conductor whenever eV ≫ k _B T. In this sense, the present situation is opposite of that which we considered in the previous publication (Gurevich et al., 1994a).