Current Partition: A Nonequilibrium Green's Function Approach

Abstract

We present a solution to the problem of ac current partition in a multiprobe mesoscopic conductor within the nonequilibrium Green's function formalism. This allows the derivation of dynamic conductance which is appropriate for nonequilibrium situations and which satisfies the current conservation and gauge invariance requirements. This formalism presents a significant generalization to previous theory: (i) There is no limit in the frequency, and (ii) it allows detailed treatments of interactions in the mesoscopic region. The formalism is applied to calculate the dynamic conductance of tunneling structures with and without assuming a wideband limit.