Detection of Majorana fermions in an Aharonov–Bohm interferometer

By using the non-equilibrium Green's function technique, we investigate the electronic transport properties in an Aharonov–Bohm interferometer coupling with Majorana fermions. We find a fixed unit conductance peak which is independent of the other factors when the topological superconductor is grounded. Especially, an additional phase appears when the topological superconductor is in the strong Coulomb regime, which induces a new conductance resonant peak compared with the structure of replacing the topological superconductor by a quantum dot, and the conductance oscillation with the magnetic flux reveals a 2π phase shift by raising(lowering) a charge on the capacitor.     

Fano Effect and Anti-Resonance Band in a Parallel-Coupled Double Quantum Dot System with Two Multi-Quantum Dot Chains

A parallel-coupled double quantum dot(PCDQD) system with two multi-quantum dot chains is designed. Conductance versus Fermi energy level is investigated utilizing the non-equilibrium Green's function approach. If two quantum dots are added on each side of the PCDQD system, additional Breit–Wigner and Fano resonances occur in the conductance spectra. If quantum dots are added on one side of the system, small Fano resonances can be observed in the conductance spectra. Adjusting the number of side-coupled quantum dots, the anti-resonance bands emerge at different positions, which makes the system applicable as a quantum switching device. Moreover,the I–V characteristic curve presents the step characteristic and the width of the step decreases with increasing the number of side-coupled quantum dots.     

Coherent Transport Through a Quantum Dot Embedded in a Double—Slit—Like Aharonov—Bohm Ring

Coherent transport through a quantum dot embedded in one arm of a double-slit-like Aharononv-Bohm(AB) ring is studied using the green‘s function approach.We obtain experimental obsevations such as continous phase shift along a single resonance peak and sharp inter-resonance phase drop.The AB oscillations of the differential conductance of the whole device are calculated by using the nonequilibrium Keldysh formalism.It is shown that the oscillating conductance has a continuous bias-voltage-dependent phase shift and is asymmetric in both linear and nonlinear response regimes.     

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 Silicon Cluster Based Single Electron Transistor with Potential Room-Temperature Switching

We demonstrate the fabrication of a single electron transistor device based on a single ultra-small silicon quantum dot connected to a gold break junction with a nanometer scale separation. The gold break junction is created through a controllable electromigration process and the individual silicon quantum dot in the junction is determined to be a Si_(170) cluster. Differential conductance as a function of the bias and gate voltage clearly shows the Coulomb diamond which confirms that the transport is dominated by a single silicon quantum dot. It is found that the charging energy can be as large as 300 meV, which is a result of the large capacitance of a small silicon quantum dot(～1.8 nm). This large Coulomb interaction can potentially enable a single electron transistor to work at room temperature. The level spacing of the excited state can be as large as 10 meV, which enables us to manipulate individual spin via an external magnetic field. The resulting Zeeman splitting is measured and the g factor of 2.3 is obtained, suggesting relatively weak electron-electron interaction in the silicon quantum dot which is beneficial for spin coherence time.     

The decoherence of the triangular and Coulomb bound potential quantum dot qubit

We study the eigenenergies and eigenfunctions of the ground and first-excited states of an electron which is strongly coupled to an LO-phonon in a quantum dot with a triangular bound potential and Coulomb bound potential by using the Pekar variational method. This system may be used as a two-level qubit. Phonon spontaneous emission causes the decoherence of the qubit. Numerical calculations are performed on the decoherence rate as a function of the polar angle, the Coulomb binding parameter, the coupling strength, the confinement length of the quantum dot and the dispersion coefficient.     

Fano versus Kondo Resonances in a Closed Aharonov-Bohm Interferometer Coupled to Ferromagnetic Electrodes

Using the Keldysh nonequilibrium Green function and equation-of-motion technique, we investigate Fano versus Kondo resonances in a closed Aharonov-Bohm interferometer coupled to ferromagnetic leads and study their effects on the conductance of this system. The conductance with both parallel and antiparallel lead-polarization alignments is analysed for various values of the magnetic flux. Our results show that this system can provide an excellent spin filtering property, and a large tunnelling magnetoresistance can arise by adjusting the system parameters, which indicates that this system is a possible candidate for spin valve transistors and has important applications in spintronics.     

Kondo effect for electron transport through an artificial quantum dot

We have calculated the transport properties of electron through an artificial quantum dot by using the numerical renormalization group technique in this paper. We obtain the conductance for the system of a quantum dot which is embedded in a one-dimensional chain in zero and finite temperature cases. The external magnetic field gives rise to a negative magnetoconductance in the zero temperature case. It increases as the external magnetic field increases. We obtain the relation between the coupling coefficient and conductance. If the interaction is big enough to prevent conduction electrons from tunnelling through the dot, the dispersion effect is dominant in this case. In the Kondo temperature regime, we obtain the conductivity of a quantum dot system with Kondo correlation.     

Coulomb Interaction in Quantum Dot with a Precessing Magnetic Field

We study electronic transport through a quantum dot （QD） with a precessing magnetic field. By using the Keldysh nonequilibrium Green function method, formulas of local density of states （LDOS） and conductance of QD are derived self-consistently. It shows that the LDOS and conductance have obvious changes with the Coulomb blockade interaction. The intensity and angle of the magnetic field or temperatures, which reflect the mesoscopic structure of the QD are derived. The superiority of this device is that the QD can be controlled easily by the magnetic field, so it is valuable to apply in generating, manipulating and probing spin state.     

QUANTUM PERCOLATION AND BALLISTIC CONDUCTANCE IN A SYSTEM OF DOUBLE-COUPLED CHAINS

The quantum-mechanical calculation of electronic conductance in double-coupled chains as a function of the interchain bonding probability p is presented. The calculated results show that one still can see the basic plateaus in the ensemble-averaged conductance curves as a function of the Fermi energy for the weak disorder. In addition, dense irregularly oscillating structures are superimposed upon each plateau. The characteristics of the conductance are very sensitive to the presence of the interchain broken bonds. For the strong disorder (p≈0.5) the conductance quantization breaks down. The accuracy of the quantization conductance rapidly drops down as the value of p approaches 0.5. The ensemble-averaged value of the logarithmic conductance as a function of the sample length exhibits a linear variation, determining a localization length. Both the localization length and the root-mean- square (RMS) value of the conductance fluctuations depend on p and the Fermi energy of electrons. The variations of the localization length and RMS with p are both of an approximate parabolic function around p≈0.5. No percolation transition is found for this quasi-one-dimensional system, as expected.     

Thermoelectric transport through a quantum dot with a magnetic impurity

We study the thermoelectric effect in a small quantum dot with a magnetic impurity in the Coulomb blockade regime.The electrical conductance,thermal conductance,thermopower,and the thermoelectrical figure of merit(FOM)are calculated by using Green’s function method.It is found that the peaks in the electrical conductance are split by the exchange coupling between the electron entering into the dot and the magnetic impurity inside the dot,accompanied by the decrease in the height of peaks.As a result,the resonances in the thermoelectric quantities,such as the thermal conductance,thermopower,and the FOM,are all split,opening some effective new working regions.Despite of the significant reduction in the height of the electrical conductance peaks induced by the exchange coupling,the values of the FOM and the thermopower can be as large as those in the case of zero exchange coupling.We also find that the thermoelectric efficiency,characterized by the magnitude of the FOM,can be enhanced by adjusting the left–right asymmetry of the electrode–dot coupling or by optimizing the system’s temperature.     

Single-particle distribution function of a quantum dot system at finite temperature

In the present paper,we shall rigorously re-establish the result of the single-particle function of a quantum dot system at finite temperature.Unlike the proof given in our previous work(Phys.Rev.B 74 195414(2006)),we take a different approach,which does not exploit the explicit expression of the Gibbs distribution function.Instead,we only assume that the statistical distribution function of the quantum dot system is thermodynamically stable.As a result,we are able to show clearly that the electronic structure in the quantum dot system is completely determined by its thermodynamic stability.Furthermore,the weaker requirements on the statistical distribution function also make it possible to apply the same method to the quantum dot systems in non-equilibrium states.     

Conductance of a Quantum Dot in the Presence of a Phonon Field

We theoretically investigate the electrical transport property of a quantum dot with longitudinal optical phonons. The conductance through the dot connected to two leads is calculated by the nonequilibrium Green function within the Landauer-Büttiker framework. The numerical examples of the conductance with different electron-phonon coupling strengths show that the presence of a phonon field typically results in the suppression of the main peak accompanied by some phonon side peaks. Both the main peak and the side peaks axe sensitive to the electron-phonon coupling strength, which is related to temperature. Our results for this system are consistent with some related previous works but the calculation is comparatively simple.     

The mechanism of producing energy-polarization entangled photon pairs in the cavity-quantum electrodynamics scheme

We investigate theoretically two photon entanglement processes in a photonic-crystal cavity embedding a quantum dot in the strong-coupling regime. The model proposed by Johne et al. (Johne R, Gippius N A, Pavlovic G, Solnyshkov D D, Shelykh I A and Malpuech G 2008 Phys. Rev. Lett. 100 240404), and by Robert et al. (Robert J, Gippius N A and Malpuech G 2009 Phys. Rev. B 79 155317) is modified by considering irreversible dissipation and incoherent continuous pumping for the quantum dot, which is necessary to connect the realistic experiment. The dynamics of the system is analysed by employing the Born–Markov master equation, through which the spectra for the system are computed as a function of various parameters. By means of this analysis the photon-reabsorption process in the strong-coupling regime is first observed and analysed from the perspective of radiation spectrum and the optimal parameters for observing energy-entangled photon pairs are identified.     

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.     

Universal Quantum Fluctuations and Crossover Phenomena in Tunnelling Through Small Coulomb Islands

Tunnelling through small Coulomb islands is studied in the intermediate coupling regime based on a generalized multi-level Anderson-Wolff model.It is shown that conductance and magnetization as a function of voltage exhibit a type of universal quantum fluctuation.We predict new crossover from the Coulomb blockade oscillations to the universal conductance fluctuations,and the Coulomb blockade oscillation assisted Kondo peaks.     

Effect of Intra-Dot Coulomb Interaction on Andreev Reflection in Normal-Metal/Quantum-Dot/Superconductor System

We investigate the effect of intra-dot Coulomb interaction on the Andreev reflection in a normalmetal/quantum-dot/superconductor (N-QD-S) system with multiple levels in the quantum dot, in the regime where the intra-dot interacting constant is comparable to the energy gap of superconducting lead. By using nonequilibrium Green function method, the averaged occupation of electrons in the quantum dot and the Andreev reflection (AR) current are studied. Comparing to the case of non-interacting quantum dot, the system shows significant changes for the a two-step-like behavior; and the I-Vg shows two groups of peaks, separated by U and with equal heights, where Vg is the gate voltage and U denotes the intra-dot Coulomb interaction constant. (ii) For finite bias voltage, dips, superposed V ≥ U/2, extra AR current peaks occur between the two groups of the peaks. Besides, the properties of the heights of the AR current peaks are more complicated.``     

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.     

Fabrication and electrical properties of a carbon nanotube quantum dot

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) were synthesized by pyrolyzing methane (CH₄) at a temperature of 900℃ on SiO₂ substrates pre-coated with iron nano-particles. Electrical contacts were fabricated onto one of the SWNTs by using an electron beam lithography process. Coulomb blockade and single-electron tunnelling characters were found at low temperatures, indicating that the SWNT in-between the electrodes forms a quantum dot. It is found that the Coulomb gap of the quantum dot is about 8.57 meV, and the factor \alpha , which converts the gate voltage to the true electrostatic potential shift, is around 200 for this device.     

Entangled Three Qutrit Coherent States and Localizable Entanglement

Choosing I-concurrence as the measure of bipartite entanglement and using yon Neumann projective local measurements, localizable entanglement （LE） in a three-qutrit system is studied. A superposition of the qutrit-coherent- state of this system is considered ant its LE is obtained and analyzed as a function of the relevant parameters. It is observed that one may achieve the maximal entanglement or no entanglement at all, depending on the choice of the parameters involved.