Quantum transport via dot devices with arbitrarily strong interactions

The paper develops a theory of tunneling electron transport through atomic-scale systems (or briefly quantum dots) with arbitrarily strong interaction. The theory is based on a diagram technique for nonequilibrium Green's functions defined on Hubbard operators. The use of Hubbard operators, describing many-body states of an entire quantum dot, makes it possible to represent the Hamiltonian of the quantum dot in a universal diagonal form and consider its coupling with two leads within the perturbation theory. It is shown that in the case when all Hubbard operators are defined for the same site, some rules of the diagram technique for Hubbard operators, initially developed for lattice models, have to be modified. As an example of the application of the modified theory, the current-voltage characteristics of the single-impurity Anderson model with infinitely large Coulomb repulsion are calculated. It is shown that taking into account the multiple electron tunneling processes with spin flips results in the dip in the center of the Lorentz distribution peak, describing the density of states of the one level Anderson impurity coupled with two leads. The emergence of this dip in the density of states leads to a peculiar feature in the bias voltage dependence of the differential conductivity, which can be detected experimentally.

Automated summary

The paper develops a theory of tunneling electron transport through atomic-scale systems with strong interaction, based on a diagram technique for nonequilibrium Green's functions. The use of Hubbard operators allows for a universal diagonal form of the quantum dot's Hamiltonian and its coupling with two leads. Modified rules of the diagram technique for Hubbard operators are required when all operators are defined for the same site. The theory is applied to calculate the current-voltage characteristics of the single-impurity Anderson model with infinite Coulomb repulsion, showing the emergence of a dip in the density of states and a peculiar feature in the bias voltage dependence of the differential conductivity.