Resonant transmission of fermionic carriers: comparison between solid-state physics and quantum optics approaches

Abstract: We revisit the phenomenon of the resonant transmission of fermionic carriers through a quantum device connected to two contacts with different chemical potentials. We show that, besides the traditional in solid-state physics Landauer-B\"uttiker approach, this phenomenon can be also described by the non-Markovian master equation for the reduced density matrix of the fermions in the quantum device. We identify validity regions of both approaches in the system parameter space and argue that for large relaxation rates the accuracy of the latter approach greatly exceeds the accuracy of the former.