Weak Coulomb blockade effect in quantum dots

TL;DR

This paper develops a non-equilibrium transport theory for quantum dots incorporating Coulomb blockade effects using a 1/N expansion, revealing no interaction correction to weak localization at leading orders, aligning with experimental observations.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic 1/N expansion approach to analyze Coulomb blockade effects in quantum dot transport, improving upon previous models.

Findings

No interaction correction to weak localization at leading orders.

The theory aligns with experimental results for N=4.

Provides a self-consistent equation for the quantum dot potential.

Abstract

We develop the general non-equilibrium theory of transport through a quantum dot, including Coulomb Blockade effects via a 1/N expansion, where N is the number of scattering channels. At lowest order we recover the Landauer formula for the current plus a self-consistent equation for the dot potential. We obtain the leading corrections and compare with earlier approaches. Finally, we show that to leading and next leading order in 1/N there is no interaction correction to the weak localization, in contrast to previous theories, but consistent with experiments by Huibers et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 1917 (1998)], where N=4.