The interacting resonant level model in nonequilibrium: finite temperature effects

TL;DR

This paper investigates the nonequilibrium interacting resonant level model at finite temperatures, revealing how reservoir temperatures influence steady-state properties, power-law behaviors, and relaxation dynamics, including a temperature-driven transition from coherent to incoherent behavior.

Contribution

It provides analytical insights into how finite reservoir temperatures act as infrared cutoffs and affect power laws, relaxation, and coherence in the model, extending understanding of finite-temperature effects in quantum dot systems.

Findings

Reservoir temperatures serve as infrared cutoffs in steady state.

Power-law behaviors depend on temperature and bias with interaction-dependent exponents.

A temperature-induced transition from coherent to incoherent dynamics is identified.

Abstract

We study the steady-state properties as well as the relaxation dynamics of the nonequilibrium interacting resonant level model at finite temperatures. It constitutes the prototype model of a correlated charge fluctuating quantum dot. The two reservoirs are held at different chemical potentials---the difference being the bias voltage---and different temperatures; we discuss the transport through as well as the occupancy of the single level dot. First, we show analytically that in the steady state the reservoir temperatures in competition with the other energy scales act as infrared cutoffs. This is rather intuitive but, depending on the parameter regime under consideration, leads to a surprisingly rich variety of power laws in the current as a function of the temperatures and the bias voltage with different interaction dependent exponents. Next we clarify how finite reservoir temperatures affect the dynamics. They allow to tune the interplay of the two frequencies characterizing the oscillatory part of the time evolution of the model at zero temperature. For the exponentially decaying part we disentangle the contributions of the level-lead hybridization and the temperatures to the decay rates. We identify a coherent-to-incoherent transition in the long time dynamics as the temperature is raised. It occurs at an interaction dependent critical temperature. Finally, taking different temperatures in the reservoirs we discuss the relaxation dynamics of a temperature gradient driven current.