Kondo effect in coupled quantum dots: A noncrossing approximation study

The out-of-equilibrium transport properties of a double quantum dot system in the Kondo regime are studied theoretically by means of a two-impurity Anderson Hamiltonian with interimpurity hopping. The Hamiltonian, formulated in slave-boson language, is solved by means of a generalization of the noncrossing approximation (NCA) to the present problem. We provide benchmark calculations of the predictions of the NCA for the linear and nonlinear transport properties of coupled quantum dots in the Kondo regime. We give a series of predictions that can be observed experimentally in linear and nonlinear transport measurements through coupled quantum dots. Importantly, it is demonstrated that measurements of the differential conductance G=dI/dV, for the appropriate values of voltages and interdot tunneling couplings, can give a direct observation of the coherent superposition between the many-body Kondo states of each dot. This coherence can be also detected in the linear transport through the system: the curve linear conductance vs temperature is nonmonotonic, with a maximum at a temperature T-* characterizing quantum coherence between both the Kondo states.