Rectifying behavior in Coulomb blockades: Charging rectifiers

We introduce examples of tunneling and diffusive, Coulomb-regulated rectifiers based on the Coulomb blockade formalism in discrete and continuum systems, respectively. Nonlinearity of the interacting dynamics profoundly enhances the inherent asymmetry of the devices by reducing the Hilbert space of accessible states. The discrete charging rectifier is structurally similar to hybrid molecular electronic rectifiers, while the continuum-charging rectifier is based on a model of ionic flow through a pore (ion channel) with an artificial branch. The devices are formally related to ratchet systems with spatial periodicity replaced by a winding number: the current.