Nonequilibrium mesoscopic quantum transport and conductance quantization
A quantum transport formalism based upon the balance equations for momentum and energy will be used to investigate nonequilibrium steady-state transport in mesoscopic systems. We show that our formalism is able to probe the global and local properties of mesosopic systems. We will derive the Landauer?B?ttiker (LB) conductance for a quantum point contact (QPC) and show that dissipation is induced in the QPC. As a result the notion of ballistic transport is questioned, because locally dissipation is enhanced in the QPC.