Elastic scattering in a quantum wire has several novel features not seen in 1D, 2D or 3D. In this work we consider a single channel quantum wire as its application is inevitable in making devices based on quantum interference effects. We consider a point defect or a single delta function impurity in such a wire and show how some of these novel features affect Friedel-sum-rule (FSR) in a way, that is quite unlike in 1D, 2D and 3D.

The Landauer conductance of a two terminal device equals to the number of open modes in the weak scattering limit. What is the corresponding result if we close the system into a ring? Is it still bounded by the number of open modes? Or is it unbounded as in the semi-classical (Drude) analysis? It turns out that the calculation of the mesoscopic conductance is similar to solving a percolation problem. The "percolation" is in energy space rather than in real space. The non-universal structures and the sparsity of the perturbation matrix cannot be ignored.

We have studied the current magnification effect in a multi-channel open mesoscopic ring. We show that the current magnification effect is robust even in the presence of several propagating modes inspite of mode mixing and cancellation effects. The magnitude of circulating currents in the multichannel regime can be much larger than that in a single channel case. Impurities can enhance or degrade the current magnification effect depending sensitively on the system parameters. Circulating currents are mostly associated with Fano resonances in the total transport current. We further show that system-lead coupling qualitatively changes the current magnification effect.

Tunneling delay times of wavepackets in quantum mechanical penetration of rectangular barriers have long been known to show a perplexing independence with respect to the width of the barrier. This also has relevence to the transmission of evanescent waves in optics. Some authors have claimed that in the presence of absorption or inelastic channels (which they model by taking a complex barrier potential) this effect no longer exists, in that the time delay becomes proportional to the barrier width. Taking the point of view that complex potentials imply nonHermitian Hamiltonians and are as such fraught with conceptual pit-falls particularly in connection to problems involving time evolution, we have constructed a two-channel model which does not suffer from such maladies in order to examine this issue. We find that the conclusions arrived at by the earlier authors need to be qualified.

The Fano Resonance, involving the mixing between a quasi-bound 'discrete' state of an inelastic channel lying in the continuum of scattering states belonging to the elastic channel, has several subtle features. The underlying ideas have recently attracted attention in connection with interference effects in quantum wires and mesoscopic transport phenomena. Simple toy models are provided in the present study to illustrate the basics of the Fano resonance in a simple and tractable setting.