Cotunneling current through quantum dots with phonon-assisted spin-flip processes

TL;DR

This paper derives an expression for phonon-assisted cotunneling current in quantum dots with spin-flip processes, analyzing the effects of spin-phonon coupling and proposing a method to determine relaxation rates.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized Schrieffer-Wolff transformation to analyze phonon-assisted cotunneling and proposes a new method to determine spin-phonon relaxation rates.

Findings

Derived an expression for phonon-assisted cotunneling current.

Analyzed the impact of spin-phonon coupling on quantum dot heating.

Proposed a method to measure spin-phonon relaxation rates.

Abstract

We consider cotunneling through a quantum dot in the presence of spin-flip processes induced by the coupling to acoustic phonons of the surrounding. An expression for the phonon-assisted cotunneling current is derived by means of a generalized Schrieffer-Wolff transformation. The influence of the spin-phonon coupling on the heating of the dot is considered. The result is evaluated for the case of a parabolic semiconductor quantum dot with Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling and a method for the determination of the spin-phonon relaxation rate is proposed.