Shaping Electronic Flows with Strongly Correlated Physics

Nonequilibrium quantum transport is of central importance in nanotechnology. Its description requires the understanding of strong electronic correlations that couple atomic-scale phenomena to the nanoscale. So far, research in correlated transport has focused predominantly on few-channel transport, precluding the investigation of cross-scale effects. Recent theoretical advances enable the solution of models that capture the interplay between quantum correlations and confinement beyond a few channels. This problem is the focus of this study. We consider an atomic impurity embedded in a metallic nanosheet spanning two leads, showing that transport is significantly altered by tuning only the phase of a single local hopping parameter. Furthermore─depending on this phase─correlations reshape the electronic flow throughout the sheet, either funneling it through the impurity or scattering it away from a much larger region. This demonstrates the potential for quantum correlations to bridge length scales in the design of nanoelectronic devices and sensors.

[1] A. Erpenbeck, E. Gull, and G. Cohen, Quantum Monte Carlo Method in the Steady State, Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 186301 (2023).
[2] A. Erpenbeck, E. Gull, and G. Cohen, Shaping Electronic Flows with Strongly Correlated Physics, Nano Lett. 23, 10480 (2023).