MANY-ELECTRON EFFECTS ON BALLISTIC TRANSPORT

A Thomas-Fermi-Dirac-von Weizsacker density-functional formalism is us ed to study the effects of many-electron Coulomb interactions on quant um transport through two-dimensional semiconductor nanostructures. The electron density is obtained by direct minimization of the total ener gy functional, and an effective potential for the electrons is determi ned as a functional of the density self-consistently. Transmission coe fficient and conductance are computed with the effective potential inc luded. The electron density distribution as well as the effective pote ntial are strongly affected by the average electron density and the di stance between the two-dimensional electron gas and the positive backg round charge. The transmission property of a stadium-shaped open quant um-dot system is investigated by varying these system parameters. The electron ballistic transport problem is solved in the presence of the many-electron effective potential and results are compared to that of the single-electron approximation. Some important differences are obse rved.