Semiclassical dynamics of nanoelectromechanical systems

Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of a single phonon (oscillator) mode linearly coupled to an electronic few-level system in contact with external particle reservoirs (leads). A stationary electronic current through the system generates nontrivial dynamical behavior of the oscillator. Using Feynman-Vernon influence functional theory, we derive a Langevin equation for the oscillator trajectory that is nonperturbative in the system-leads coupling and from which we extract effective oscillator potentials and friction coefficients. For the two simplest cases of a single and two coupled electronic levels, we discuss various regimes of the oscillator dynamics.