Mesoscopic transport beyond linear response

Abstract

We present an approach to steady-state mesoscopic transport based on the maximum entropy principle formulation of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. Our approach is not limited to the linear response regime. We show that this approach yields the quantization observed in the integer quantum Hall effect at large currents, which until now has been unexplained. We also predict new behaviors of non-local resistances at large currents in the presence of dirty contacts.

14 pages plus one figure (with an insert) (post-script codes appended), RevTeX 3.0, UCF-CM-93-004 (Revised)