Abstract
Electron-vibron coupling in quantum dots can lead to a strong suppression of the average current in the sequential tunneling regime. This effect is known as Franck-Condon blockade and can be traced back to an overlap integral between vibron states with different electron numbers which becomes exponentially small for large electron-vibron coupling strength. Here, we investigate the effect of a time-dependent drive on this phenomenon, in particular the effect of an oscillatory gate voltage acting on the electronic dot level. We employ two different approaches: perturbation theory based on nonequilibrium Keldysh Green's functions and a master equation in Born-Markov approximation. In both cases, we find that the drive can lift the blockade by exciting vibrons. As a consequence, the relative change in average current grows exponentially with the drive strength.
3 More- Received 10 August 2016
- Revised 7 October 2016
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.94.205412
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