The Landauer Resistivity Dipole

Abstract

In a well—known paper almost forty years ago [1], Landauer discussed the problem of where the actual potential drop occurs in a conductor with a finite current. This problem is of interest particularly in the case of the residual resistivity at low temperatures, where impurities or the system boundaries are the only source of scattering. Landauer realized that this question requires a full treatment of the quantum mechanical propagation of electrons through a conductor with a specific configuration of scatterers.