Coherence and Coulomb blockade in single-electron devices: A unified treatment of interaction effects

S. Florens, P. San José, F. Guinea, and A. Georges
Phys. Rev. B 68, 245311 – Published 15 December 2003
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Abstract

We study the interplay between Coulomb blockade and the Kondo effect in quantum dots. We use a self-consistent scheme which describes mesoscopic devices in terms of a collective phase variable (slave rotor) and quasiparticle degrees of freedom. In the strong Coulomb blockade regime, we recover the description of metallic islands in terms of a phase-only action. For a dot with well-separated levels, our method leads to the Kondo effect. We identify the regime where a crossover between the Coulomb blockade regime at high temperatures and the formation of a Kondo resonance at lower temperature takes place. In addition, we find that for a dot with many overlapping resonances, an inverse crossover can take place. A Kondo resonance which involves many levels within the dot is first formed, and this coherent state is suppressed by correlation effects at lower temperatures. A narrower Kondo resonance, due to a single level in the dot, can emerge at even lower temperatures.

  • Received 14 July 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.68.245311

©2003 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

S. Florens1, P. San José2, F. Guinea2, and A. Georges1

  • 1Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 24 Rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France
  • 2Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid, CSIC, Cantoblanco, E-28049 Madrid, Spain

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Vol. 68, Iss. 24 — 15 December 2003

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