Eugen Grycko, Werner Kirsch, Tobias Mühlenbruch
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
University of Hagen
Universitätsstrasse 1, D-58094, Hagen, GERMANY

Abstract. Recently the phenomenon of enforced thermal noise amplification in a conductor exposed to an electrostatic field has been discovered in a laboratory experiment and qualitatively explained by computations concerning a simplified quantum model. The dispersion of the velocity operator of an electron at thermal equilibrium has turned out to be an appropriate indicator of the thermal noise level inherent in a metal. In the present contribution the behavior of this indicator is studied for an electron confined within a lattice which is interpreted as a quantum position space in the sense of a tight binding model. It turns out that the dispersion of the velocity operator increases when a narrow gap is arranged between two pieces of a metal. An empirical pendant of this computational result is also reported.

Received: October 26, 2013

AMS Subject Classification: 81-04, 81-05, 81V10, 82B10

Key Words and Phrases: Hamiltonian, quantum Gibbs state, dispersion of the velocity operator

We dedicate this contribution to Professor Andrei Duma from Hagen
on the occasion of his birthday.

Download paper from here.