  Nonreciprocal effects in nanoelectronic devices offer unique possibilities
for manipulating electron transport and engineering quantum electronic circuits
for information processing purposes. However, a lack of rigorous theoretical
tools is hindering this development. Here, we provide a general input-output
description of nonreciprocal transport in solid-state quantum dot
architectures, based on quantum optomechanical analogs. In particular, we break
reciprocity between coherently-coupled quantum dots by dissipation-engineering
in which these (so-called) primary dots are mutually coupled to auxiliary,
damped quantum dots. We illustrate the general framework in two representative
multiterminal noninteracting models, which can be used as building blocks for
larger circuits. Importantly, the identified optimal conditions for
nonreciprocal behavior hold even in the presence of additional dissipative
effects that result from local electron-phonon couplings. Besides the analysis
of the scattering matrix, we show that a nonreciprocal coupling induces
unidirectional electron flow in the resonant transport regime. Altogether, our
analysis provides the formalism and working principles towards the realization
of nonreciprocal nanoelectronic devices.
