Stroboscopic wavepacket description of non-equilibrium many-electron problems

We introduce the construction of a orthogonal wavepacket basis set, using the concept of stroboscopic time propagation, tailored to the efficient description of non-equilibrium extended electronic systems. Thanks to three desirable properties of this basis, significant insight is provided into non-equilibrium processes (both time-dependent and steady-state), and reliable physical estimates of various many-electron quantities such as density, current and spin polarization can be obtained. The use of this novel tool is demonstrated for time-dependent switching-on of the bias in quantum transport, and new results are obtained for current-induced spin accumulation at the edge of a 2D doped semiconductor caused by edge-induced spin-orbit interaction.