The Cayley transform applied to non-interacting quantum transport (Q2452455)

Landauer and Büttiker used heuristic arguments to derive the so-called Landauer-Büttiker formula that links scattering matrix, unperturbed operator and perturbation. In the physical setting, the formula provides the steady state charge current flowing through a non-relativistic quantum device where the carriers are not self-interacting. Since then, several works followed to establish their approach in a rigorous manner. All these works assume that both Hamiltonians are bounded from below and that the difference between their resolvents raised to some integer power is trace class. In this paper, the authors extend the Landauer-Büttiker formalism to deal with both unitary and self-adjoint operators unbounded from below. The results are applied to give current formulas for the systems involving operators that are unbounded from below. Such systems include a system with four pseudo-relativistic semi-infinite leads and with an inner sample described by a Schrödinger operator defined on a bounded interval with dissipative boundary conditions.