Hi Christoph,
I thought the current was plotted with kwant.plotter.current(), so I just checked that documentation. Now I see that it's a shortcut for the stremplot.
I understand your explanation about how the lines are drawn, but, if the algorithm doesn't know about the form of the current field, how does it know how thick it needs to draw the arrow? In any case, could it be safer to plot the arrows with always the same thickness and just look at the colorplot to see the value?
Thanks for the explanation!
________________________________________
From: Christoph Groth
But then, in one edge I have a stronger color meaning there is more current there, but on the other hand, in the other edge the arrow is thicker, which I assume it also represents more current. Does the arrow thickness and color represent the same thing and therefore both edges have the same current or do they represent different things and so I'm missing something? Could you please clarify this for me?
Hi Marc, did you check the documentation of kwant.plotter.streamplot? Do you find it unclear? In which way? You are right that both the color plot and the flow lines show the same information, or rather slightly different complementary aspects of it: - The color plot shows more details and is more quantitative, but it does not show the overall direction of the current. - The flow lines do show the direction, but lack detail. The algorithm that draws the flowlines (we use matplotlib.streamplot) basically starts drawing streamlines at random points and avoids drawing them too close to each other. That algorithm has no idea of the overall form of the current field, so that it may happen that it draws one line in the middle of an edge state, while for another edge state it draws two lines at the sides (where the density is lower). Cheers, Christoph