Analysis of Quantum-Transport Phenomena in Mesoscopic Systems: A Monte Carlo Approach

A theoretical investigation of quantum-transport phenomena in mesoscopic systems is presented. In particular, a generalization to "open systems" of the well-known semiconductor Bloch equations is proposed. Compared to the conventional Bloch theory, the presence of spatial boundary conditions manifests itself through self-energy corrections and additional source terms in the kinetic equations, which are solved by means of a generalized Monte Carlo simulation. The proposed numerical approach is applied to the study of quantum-transport phenomena in double-barrier structures