Effective equilibrium theory of nonequilibrium quantum transport (Q654879)

The theoretical description of strongly correlated quantum systems out of equilibrium presents several challenges, and a number of open questions persists. The authors focus on nonlinear electronic transport through an interacting quantum dot maintained at finite bias using a concept introduced by \textit{S. Hershfield} [``Reformulation of steady state nonequilibrium quantum statistical mechanics'', Phys. Rev. Lett. 70, No.~14, 2134--2137 (1993; \url{doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.70.2134})] whereby one can express such nonequilibrium quantum impurity models in terms of the system's Lippman-Schwinger operators. These scattering operators allow one to reformulate the nonequilibrium problem as an effective equilibrium problem associated with a modified Hamiltonian. In this paper, a pedagogical analysis of the core concepts of the effective equilibrium theory is provided. First, the equivalence between observables computed using the Schwinger-Keldysh framework and the effective equilibrium approach is demonstrated, and Green's functions in the two theoretical frameworks are related to one another. Secondly, some applications of this method are explained in the context of interacting quantum impurity models. A novel framework to treat effects of interactions perturbatively while capturing the entire dependence on the bias voltage is introduced. For the sake of concreteness, the Anderson model is employed as a prototype for this scheme. Working at the particle-hole symmetric point, the self-energy of an electron on the dot to second order in the interaction strength is derived, capturing the complete nonlinear bias dependence. This result is then used to study the spectral function of the dot within the Born approximation. The observed central peak can be regarded as a precursor of the much sharper Abrikosov-Suhl (Kondo) peak. The Abrikosov-Suhl resonance is investigated as a function of bias voltage and magnetic field.