Fractional Conductances of Wires: The S-Matrix Approach

Abstract

Quasi-one-dimensional systems with multiple conduction channels are essential for describing a range of physical phenomena. In this paper, we analyse transport in wires where electrons are subject to arbitrary number of strong multi-particle backscattering terms. We present an exact calculation of the system’s scattering matrix and derive a formula for the two-terminal conductance. We find the conductance is reduced from its ideal value by a term corresponding to the projection of current fields onto the subspace of integer-valued vectors characterising the gapped channels created by the perturbations. Applying this result, we establish the minimal model required to reproduce the recently observed, yet unexplained, fractional conductance plateaus with even denominators.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst15090818
Divisions: College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > School of Computer Science and Digital Technologies > Applied Mathematics & Data Science
College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > School of Computer Science and Digital Technologies
College of Engineering & Physical Sciences
Aston University (General)
Funding Information: This work was supported by the SCE internal grant EXR01/Y17/T1/D3/Yr1 (V.K.). IVY gratefully acknowledges support from the Leverhulme Trust under the grant RPG-2024-124.
Additional Information: Copyright © 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/).
Uncontrolled Keywords: multi-channel Luttinger liquids,transport in coupled-wire systems,fractional conductance
Publication ISSN: 2073-4352
Last Modified: 06 Oct 2025 17:32
Date Deposited: 30 Sep 2025 09:51
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: https://www.mdp ... 3-4352/15/9/818 (Publisher URL)
http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2025-09-18
Published Online Date: 2025-09-18
Accepted Date: 2025-09-16
Authors: Davies, Rose
Kagalovsky, Victor
Yurkevich, Igor V. (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-1447-8913)

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