Resonant tunneling through ultrasmall quantum dots: zero-bias anomalies, magnetic field dependence, and boson-assisted transport

TL;DR

This paper investigates resonant tunneling through a quantum dot with strong Coulomb interactions, revealing complex spectral features, zero-bias anomalies, and the effects of magnetic fields and bosonic environments on electron transport.

Contribution

It introduces a real-time diagrammatic approach to analyze non-perturbative Coulomb effects, magnetic field splitting, and boson interactions in quantum dot tunneling.

Findings

Spectral density exhibits split Kondo peaks influenced by voltage, boson frequencies, and magnetic field.

Zero-bias conductance anomalies depend on the quantum dot level position.

Theoretical results align with recent experimental observations of electron transport anomalies.

Abstract

We study resonant tunneling through a single-level quantum dot in the presence of strong Coulomb repulsion beyond the perturbative regime. The level is either spin-degenerate or can be split by a magnetic field. We, furthermore, discuss the influence of a bosonic environment. Using a real-time diagrammatic formulation we calculate transition rates, the spectral density and the nonlinear $I-V$ characteristic. The spectral density shows a multiplet of Kondo peaks split by the transport voltage and the boson frequencies, and shifted by the magnetic field. This leads to zero-bias anomalies in the differential conductance, which agree well with recent experimental results for the electron transport through single-charge traps. Furthermore, we predict that the sign of the zero-bias anomaly depends on the level position relative to the Fermi level of the leads.