Coulomb Interaction and Charging Effects in Conductance of Mesoscopic Quantum Wire Structures

Electron transport in a quantun wire structure is investigated with comprehensive account of Coulomb interaction which includes both the direct interaction of electrons with each other and their interaction via the image charges induced on the leads. The Coulomb interaction is shown to change significantly the electron density distribution along the wiw as compared with Luttinger liquid nodeL Under DC conditions, it causes the charge density to strongly increase near to the contacts with the leads. Together with a proximity effect, this may be a reason of nonuniversal conductance quantization. AC conductance shows a resonant behavior caused by charge waves. The charge wave velocity is renormalized due to the Coulomb interaction in a frequency-dependent manner the velocity increases noticably with decreasing the frequency. In the nonlinear regime, the conductance is significantly affected by the charge stored in the wire.