Inelastic tunneling through normal and superconducting junctions in the presence of a photonic bath within the Lindbladian formalism

Abstract

An electron tunneling across a junction integrated into an electric circuit can generate an excitation in the photonic field (electromagnetic environment) and lose energy in the process. Such inelastic tunneling of particles is commonly described using the P(E) theory. In the conventional approach to this theory, the tunneling rate and the electric current through the junction are derived using Fermi's golden rule and by averaging over the environmental photonic degrees of freedom. In this work, we address the same problem of inelastic tunneling due to photonic environment in Lindbladian formalism and we present how the photonic degrees of freedom are traced out in the quantum master equation approach. The resulting quantum master equation is parametrized by the same P(E) function and enables us to obtain not only the electric current but various other quantities, for instance, the heat current, in a systematic and convenient way. We also demonstrate that the Lindbladian formalism provides a comprehensive description of Bogoliubov quasiparticle tunneling through superconducting junctions and that it properly accounts for the coherence factors. The coherence factors become important if the normal-state density of states is particle-hole asymmetric.

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