Correlated sequential tunneling through a double barrier for interacting one-dimensional electrons

TL;DR

This paper investigates how higher-order correlated tunneling processes influence the conductance in a quantum dot system coupled to one-dimensional interacting electrons, revealing conditions where these effects are significant.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic inclusion of correlated sequential tunneling diagrams in the analysis of resonant tunneling through a quantum dot with Luttinger liquid leads.

Findings

Higher-order CST processes can significantly affect conductance.

Temperature dependence of conductance peaks is influenced by CST.

Parameter regimes where CST effects dominate are identified.

Abstract

The problem of resonant tunneling through a quantum dot weakly coupled to spinless Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids has been studied. We compute the linear conductance due to sequential tunneling processes upon employing a master equation approach. Besides the previously used lowest-order golden rule rates describing uncorrelated sequential tunneling (UST) processes, we systematically include higher-order correlated sequential tunneling (CST) diagrams within the standard Weisskopf-Wigner approximation. We provide estimates for the parameter regions where CST effects can be important. Focusing mainly on the temperature dependence of the peak conductance, we discuss the relation of these findings to previous theoretical and experimental results.