Modeling of inelastic transport in one-dimensional metallic atomic wires

Atomic-size conductors represent the ultimate limit of miniaturization, and understanding their properties is an important problem in the fields of nanoelectronics and molecular electronics. Quantum effects become important which leads to a physical behavior fundamentally different from macroscopic devices. A full description of the transport properties of atomic-size conductors therefore requires a quantum mechanical treatment of both the electronic and mechanical degrees of freedom. In this paper, we study a one-dimensional tight-binding model of the conducting electrons combined with a balls-and-springs model for the mechanical motion of the nuclei comprising the wire. We determine the vibrational modes and frequencies for the wires. The electronic Hamiltonian is expanded to lowest order in these normal modes.