03-174 Juerg Froehlich, Marco Merkli, Daniel Ueltschi

Dissipative Transport: Thermal Contacts and Tunnelling Junctions (432K, postscript) Apr 15, 03

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Abstract. The general theory of simple transport processes between quantum mechanical reservoirs is reviewed and extended. We focus on thermoelectric phenomena, involving exchange of energy and particles. The theory is illustrated on the example of two reservoirs of free fermions coupled through a local interaction. We construct a stationary state and determine energy and particle currents with the help of a convergent perturbation series. We explicitly calculate several interesting quantities to lowest order, such as the entropy production, the resistance, and the heat conductivity. Convergence of the perturbation series allows us to prove that they are {\it strictly positive} under suitable smallness and regularity assumptions on the interaction between the reservoirs.

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