Interfering pathways in benzene: An analytical treatment

Abstract

The mechanism for off-resonant electron transport through small organic molecules in metallic junctions is predominantly coherent tunneling. Thus, new device functionalities based on quantum interference could be developed in the field of molecular electronics. We invoke a partitioning technique to give an analytical treatment of quantum interference in a benzene ring. We interpret the antiresonances in the transmission as either multipath zeroes resulting from interfering spatial pathways or resonance zeroes analogous to zeroes induced by sidechains.