Transport in coherently absorbing or amplifying media

摘要

We study electronic transport in a one-dimensional ordered chain in the presence of either absorption or amplification at each site (the site-potential having an imaginary positive or negative part) within a single-band tightbinding Hamiltonian. The spectrum in either case for the isolated (closed) quantum system is found to become broader compared to the regular Bloch case where there is no absorption or amplification at any site. Interestingly for the transport through an infinitely long ordered chain (open quantum system), the reflectance saturates to a value greater (lesser) than unity in the amplifying (absorbing) case and the transmittance decays to zero in either case. This fact implies that the transmittance does not grow indefinitely even for an ordered, amplifying (active or lasing) medium and that it is not necessary to have any disorder or interaction induced confining mechanism on the transmitted wave, so as to achieve an amplification in the backscattered wave. (author). 8 refs, 2 figs. (Atomindex citation 27:046096)