Temperature dependence of conductance and thermopower anomalies of quantum point contacts

It has been shown within the Landauer approach that the presence of the $0.7$ anomaly in the conductance of a ballistic microcontact and the respective plateau in the thermopower implies pinning of the potential barrier height at a depth of k B T below the Fermi level. A simple way of taking into account the effect of electron-electron interaction on the profile and temperature dependence of a smooth one-dimensional potential barrier in the lower subband of the microcontact has been proposed. The calculated temperature dependences of the conductance and Seebeck coefficient agree with the experimental gate-voltage dependences, including the emergence of anomalous plateaus with an increase in temperature.