Effects of nonorthogonality in the time-dependent current through tunnel junctions

A theoretical technique which allows one to include contributions from nonorthogonality of the electron states in the leads connected to a tunneling junction is derived. The theory is applied to a single-barrier tunneling structure and a simple expression for the time-dependent tunneling current is derived showing explicit dependence of the overlap. The overlap proves to be necessary for a better quantitative description of the tunneling current, and our theory reproduces experimental results substantially better compared to standard approaches.