Kondo effect in side coupled double quantum-dot molecule

Electron tunneling through a double quantum-dot molecule side attached to a quantum wire, in the Kondo regime, is studied. The mean-field finite-U slave-boson formalism is used to obtain the solution of the problem. We found conductance cancellations when the molecular energies of the side attached double quantum-dot cross the Fermi energy. We investigate the many body molecular Kondo states and its interplay with the inter-dot antiferromagnetic correlation as a function of the parameters of the system.     

Kondo effect in a double quantum-dot molecule under the effect of an electric and magnetic field

Electron tunneling through a double quantum-dot molecule, in the Kondo regime, under the effect of a magnetic field and an applied voltage, is studied. This system possesses a complex response to the applied fields characterized by a tristable solution for the conductance. The different nature of the solutions are studied in and out thermodynamical equilibrium. It is shown that the interdot coupling and the fields can be used to control the region of multistability. The mean-field slave-boson formalism is used to obtain the solution for the problem.     

Friedel phase discontinuity and bound states in the continuum in quantum dot systems

In this Letter we study the Friedel phase of the electron transport in two different systems of quantum dots which exhibit bound states in the continuum (BIC). The Friedel phase jumps abruptly in the energies of the BICs, which is associated to the vanishing width of these states, as shown by Friedrich and Wintgen in [H. Friedrich, D. Wintgen, Phys. Rev. A 31 (1985) 3964]. This odd behavior of the Friedel phase has consequences in the charge through the Friedel sum rule. Namely, if the energy of the BIC drops under the Fermi energy the charge changes abruptly in a unity. We show that this behavior closely relates to discontinuities in the conductance predicted for interacting quantum dot systems.     

A Theoretic Approach to SU(4) Kondo Effect in Carbon Nanotube Quantum Dots

We propose a mean field approach to the transport properties of carbon nanotube quantum dots. Quantum interaction between spin and orbital pseudo-spin degrees of freedom results in an SU(4) Kondo effect at low temperatures. By calculating the chemical potentials and the tunnelling strengths, and hence the spectral functions for different coupling constants and applied magnetic fields, we find that this exotic Kondo effect manifests as a four-peak splitting in the non-linear conductance when an axial magnetic field is applied.     

Large Storage Window in a-SiNx/nc-Si/a-SiNx Sandwiched Structure for Nanocrystalline Silicon Floating Gate Memory Application

An a-SiNx/nanocrystalline silicon [（nc-Si）/a-SiNx] sandwiched structure is fabricated in a plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition （PECVD） system at low temperature （250℃）. The nc-Si layer is fabricated from a hydrogen-diluted silane mixture gas by using a layer-by-layer deposition technique. Atom force microscopy measurement shows that the density of nc-Si is about 2 ×10^11 cm^-2. By the pretreatment of plasma nitridation, low density of interface states and high-quality interface between the Si substrate and a-SiNs insulator layer are obtained. The density of interface state at the midgap is calculated to be 1 ×10^10 cm^-2eV^-1 from the quasistatic and high frequency C - V data. The charging and discharging property of nc-Si quantum dots is studied by capacitance-voltage （C- V） measurement at room temperature. An ultra-large hysteresis is observed in the C - V characteristics, which is attributed to storage of the electrons and holes into the nc-Si dots. The long-term charge-loss process is studied and ascribed to low density of interface states at SiNx/Si substrate.     

Non-Equilibrium Quantum Transport of Bosons through a Quantum Dot

The quantum dot coupled to reservoirs is known as a typical mesoscopic setup to manifest the quantum characteristics of particles in transport. In analogue to many efforts made on the study of electronic quantum dots in the past decades, we study the transport of bosons through such a device. We first generalize the formula which relates the current to the local properties of dot in the bosonic situation. Then, as an illustrative example, we calculate the local density of state and lesser Green function of the localized boson with a bosonic Fano-Anderson model. The current-voltage （I - V） behaviour at zero temperature is presented, and in the bosonic dot it is the I - V curve, in contrast to the differential conductance in the electronic dot, which is found to be proportional to the spectral function.     

A quantum pseudodot system with a two-dimensional pseudoharmonic potential

We investigate the energy spectrum and the corresponding wave functions of an electron confined by a pseudoharmonic potential both including harmonic dot and antidot potentials in the presence of a strong magnetic field together with an Aharonov-Bohm flux field. Exact solutions for the energy levels and wave functions are found for this exactly soluble system. These are all tested under various conditions and also are compared with other works found in the literature. Further, we discuss the related energy spectrum in terms of special values of the proposed pseudoharmonic potential, AB field and magnetic field as a function of magnetic quantum number and magnetic field.     

Thermal Rectification Effect of an Interacting Quantum Dot

We investigate the nonlinear thermal transport properties of a single interacting quantum dot with two energy levels tunnel-coupled to two electrodes using nonequilibrium Green function method and Hartree-Fock decoupling approximation. In the case of asymmetric tunnel-couplings to two electrodes, for example, when the upper level of the quantum dot is open for transport, whereas the lower level is blocked, our calculations predict a strong asymmetry for the heat （energy） current, which shows that the quantum dot system may act as a thermal rectifier in this specific situation.     

Influence of Strain-Reducing Layer on Strain Distribution of Self-Organized InAs/GaAs Quantum Dot and Redshift of Photoluminescence Wavelength

A systematic investigation about the strain distributions around the InAs/GaAs quantum dots using the finite element method is presented. A special attention is paid to influence of an Ino.2 Gao.sAs strain reducing layer. The numerical results show that the horizontal- and vertical-strain components and the biaz~ial strain are reinforced in the InAs quantum dot due to the strain-reducing layer. However, the hydrostatic strain in the quantum dot is reduced. In the framework of eight-band k · p theory, we study the band edge modifications due to the presence of a strain reducing layer. The results demonstrate that the strain reducing layer yields the decreasing band gap, i.e., the redshift phenomenon is observed in experiments. Our calculated results show that degree of the redshift will increase with the increasing thickness of the strain-reducing layer. The calculated results can explain the experimental results in the literature, and further confirm that the long wavelength emission used for optical fibre communication is realizable by adjusting the dependent parameters. However, based on the calculated electronic and heavy-hole wave function distributions, we find that the intensity of photoluminescence will exhibits some variations with the increasing thickness of the strain-reducing layer.     

Effects of Electric Field on Electronic States in a GaAs/GaAlAs Quantum Dot with Different Confinements

Binding energies of shallow hydrogenic impurity in a GaAs/GaAlAs quantum dot with spherical confinement, parabolic confinement and rectangular confinement are calculated as a function of dot radius in the influence of electric field. The binding energy is calculated following a variational procedure within the effective mass approximation along with the spatial depended dielectric function. A finite confining potential well with depth is determined by the discontinuity of the band gap in the quantum dot and the cladding. It is found that the contribution of spatially dependent screening effects are small for a donor impurity and it is concluded that the rectangulax confinement is better than the parabolic and spherical confinements. These results are compared with the existing literature.     

Linear and nonlinear optical properties of a hydrogenic donor in lens-shaped quantum dots

Optical transitions in a Lens-Shaped Quantum Dot (LSD) are investigated in the presence of a hydrogenic impurity. The electronic wave functions are obtained analytically and the energy eigenvalues are calculated numerically. The density matrix formulation with the intersubband relaxation are used to evaluate the (linear and third order nonlinear) absorption coefficient (AC) and the change in the refractive indices (RI) analytically. The effect of the size of the LSD and optical intensity on the AC and RI are investigated. It is found that AC and RI are strongly affected by the optical intensity and the size of the LSD.     

Influence of impurity-induced spin-orbit scattering on persistent spin helix

The persistent spin helix discovered in intrinsic spin-orbit coupled systems previously is reexamined using the motion equations of Green's functions by considering the effect of extrinsic impurity-induced spin-orbit coupling. We find both the intrinsic and extrinsic spin-orbit couplings can increase the excitation energy of spin helix. They together can reduce drastically the lifetime of the spin helix, making it severely departure from the ideal infinite value. The effect of impurity density on spin helix is also analyzed. The results may be helpful to understand experimental measurements on spin helix.     

Analytic study of electron transmission through serial mesoscopic metallic rings

We investigate the electron transmission through a structure of serial mesoscopic metallic rings coupled to two external leads. A set of analytical expressions based on the quantum waveguide transport and the transfer matrix method are derived and used to discuss the effects of geometric configurations on transmission probabilities. It is found that in the contact ring case the existence of an applied magnetic flux is necessary to create transmission gaps, while in the non-contact ring case transmission gaps always appear irrespective of whether there is an applied magnetic flux or not. The transmissions for periodic rings with a defect ring and periodic rings built by two sorts of rings are also briefly studied. It is also found that the transmission periodicity with wave vector must be ensured by the commensurability of two characteristic lengths, i.e., of the half perimeter of a ring and the connecting wire between two adjacent rings. The special points of wave vector and magnetic flux which give rise to the transmission resonance and antiresonance are analyzed in detail.     

Kondo effect of a quantum dot coupling indirectly to the conduction electrons

When a quantum dot in the Kondo regime couples to two leads (the conduction electron reservoirs) indirectly through intermediate electron levels, two features are noteworthy concerning the Kondo effect. First, the Kondo peak in the spectrum of local density of states becomes narrower as the coupling to the leads is much larger than the interdot coupling, which is just opposite to the case of direct dot-lead coupling. Secondly, the increment of the coupling to the leads and the deviation of the intermediate levels from the Fermi level can effectively facilitate the formation of the negative differential conductance.     

Measurement-induced decoherence in electronic interferometry at nanoscale

We introduce a theoretical formalism describing a wide class of ‘Which Path’ experiments in mesoscopic/nanoscopic transport. The physical system involves a mesoscopic interferometer (e.g. an Aharonov-Bohm ring with embedded dots or a side-coupled quantum dot) which is electrostatically coupled to a nearby quantum point constriction. Due to the charge sensing effect the latter acts as a charge detector. Therefore the interference pattern can be monitored indirectly by looking at the current characteristics of the detector as shown in the experimental work of Buks et al. [E. Buks, R. Schuster, M. Heiblum, D. Mahalu, V. Umansky, Nature (London) 391 (1998) 871]. We use the non-equilibrium Green-Keldysh formalism and a second order perturbative treatment of the Coulomb interaction in order to compute the relevant transport properties. It is shown that in the presence of the Coulomb interaction the current through the detector exhibits oscillations as a function of the magnetic field applied on a single-dot AB interferometer. We also discuss the dependence of the visibility of the Aharonov-Bohm oscillations on the gate potential applied to the dot.     

Photon-Assisted Conductance Structure for a Quantum Dot

We investigate theoretically the electron transport of a two-level quantum dot irradiated under a weak laser field at low temperatures in the rotating wave approximation. Using the method of the Keldysh equation of motion for nonequilibrium Green function, we examine the conductance for the system with photon polarization perpendicular to the tunnelling current direction. It is demonstrated that by analytic analysing and numerical examples, a feature of conductance peak splitting appears, and the dependence of conductance on the incident laser frequency and self-energy are discussed.     

Asymmetrical shapes of optical line profiles in individual quantum dots

The experimental data on individual quantum dots show that the optical line can have the form of a very narrow spike accompanied by a shoulder. So far the shoulder has been found at the lower energy side of the narrow peak. In the present work, we study theoretically the origin of such a lineshape. We shall use a simple model of quantum dot and a simple approximation to the electronic excitation. The electronic system will be assumed to be coupled to the longitudinal optical phonons. We will show that the electronic multiple scattering on the optical phonons can then give us an explanation of the observed optical lineshape.     

Phonon-Assisted Resonant Tunnelling through a Triple-Quantum-Dot： a Phonon-Signal Detector

We study the effect of electron-phonon interaction on current and zero-frequency shot noise in resonant tunnelling through a series triple-quantum-dot coupling to a local phonon mode by means of a nonperturbative mapping technique along with the Green function formulation. By fixing the energy difference between the first two quantum dots to be equal to phonon frequency and sweeping the level of the third quantum dot, we find a largely enhanced current spectrum due to phonon effect, and in particular we predict current peaks corresponding to phonon-absorption and phonon-emission assisted resonant tunnelling processes, which show that this system can be acted as a sensitive phonon-signal detector or as a cascade phonon generator.     

Transport properties of a double quantum dot molecule in the presence of impurity effects

In this Letter, we studied the electronic transport through a parallel-coupled double quantum dot (DQD) molecule including impurity effects at zero temperature. The linear conductance can be calculated by using the Green's function method. An obvious Fano resonance arising from the impurity state in the quantum dot is observed for the symmetric dot-lead coupling structure in the absence of the magnetic flux through the quantum device. When the magnetic flux is presented, two groups of conductance peaks appear in the linear conductance spectra. Each group is decomposed into one Breit-Wigner and one Fano resonances. Tuning the system parameters, we can control effectively the shapes of these conductance peaks. The Aharonov-Bohm (AB) oscillation for the magnetic flux is also studied. The oscillation period of the linear conductance with π, 2π or 4π may be observed by tuning the interdot tunneling coupling or the dot-impurity coupling strengths.     

Spin Accumulation in a Double Quantum Dot Aharonov-Bohm Interferometer

We investigate the spin accumulation in a double quantum dot Aharonov-Bohm （AB） interferometer in which both the Rashba spin-orbit （RSO） interaction and intradot Coulomb interaction are taken into account. Due to the existence of the RSO interaction, the electron, flowing through different arms of the AB ring, will acquire a spin-dependent phase factor in the tunnel-coupling strengths. This phase factor will induce various interesting interference phenomena. It is found that the electrons of the different spin directions can accumulate in the two dots by properly adjusting the bias and the intradot level with a fixed RSO interaction strength. Moreover, both the magnitude and direction of the spin accumulation in each dot can be conveniently controlled and tuned by the gate voltage acting on the dot or the bias on the lead.