Nonadiabatic transport in a quantum dot turnstile

Valeriu Moldoveanu, Vidar Gudmundsson, and Andrei Manolescu
Phys. Rev. B 76, 165308 – Published 11 October 2007

Abstract

We present a theoretical study of the electronic transport through a many-level quantum dot driven by time-dependent signals applied at the contacts to the leads. If the barriers oscillate out of phase, the system operates like a turnstile pump under a finite constant bias, as observed in the experiments of Kouwenhoven et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 67, 1626 (1991)]. The time-dependent currents and their averages over successive pumping periods are computed from the Keldysh formalism for tight-binding models. The calculation considers a sudden application of the pumping potentials at t=0, which leads to transient features of the time-dependent and averaged currents during the first pumping cycles which turn out to be important in the high-frequency regime. We show that in the transient regime, the efficiency of the system as a pump is rather poor because it mainly absorbs charge from both leads in order to fill the levels located below the bias window. Under a finite bias and a low-frequency pumping signal, the charge transferred across the system depends on the number of levels located within the bias window. The internal charge dynamics and the role of energy sidebands are investigated. The so-called satellite peaks of the averaged current are also observed in the transient regime.

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  • Received 7 June 2007

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.76.165308

©2007 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Valeriu Moldoveanu1, Vidar Gudmundsson2, and Andrei Manolescu1

  • 1National Institute of Materials Physics, P.O. Box MG-7, Bucharest-Magurele 76900, Romania
  • 2Science Institute, University of Iceland, Dunhaga 3, IS-107 Reykjavik, Iceland

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Issue

Vol. 76, Iss. 16 — 15 October 2007

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