Non-equilibrium current and relaxation dynamics of a charge-fluctuating quantum dot

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Published 27 May 2010 Europhysics Letters Association
, , Citation C. Karrasch et al 2010 EPL 90 30003 DOI 10.1209/0295-5075/90/30003

0295-5075/90/3/30003

Abstract

We study the steady-state current in a minimal model for a quantum dot dominated by charge fluctuations and analytically describe the time evolution into this state. The current is driven by a finite-bias voltage V across the dot, and two different renormalization group methods are used to treat small-to-intermediate local Coulomb interactions. The corresponding flow equations can be solved analytically, which allows to identify all microscopic cutoff scales. Exploring the entire parameter space we find rich non-equilibrium physics which cannot be understood by simply considering the bias voltage as an infrared cutoff. For the experimentally relevant case of left-right asymmetric couplings, the current generically shows a power law suppression for large V. The relaxation dynamics towards the steady state features characteristic oscillations as well as an interplay of exponential and power law decay.

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10.1209/0295-5075/90/30003