Fermionic superoperators for zero-temperature nonlinear transport: Real-time perturbation theory and renormalization group for Anderson quantum dots

Abstract

We study electron quantum transport through a strongly interacting Anderson quantum dot at finite bias voltage and magnetic field at zero temperature using the real-time renormalization group (RT-RG) in the framework of a kinetic (generalized master) equation for the reduced density operator. To this end, we further develop the general, finite-temperature real-time transport formalism by introducing field superoperators that obey fermionic statistics. This direct second quantization in Liouville Fock space strongly simplifies the construction of operators and superoperators that transform irreducibly under the Anderson-model symmetry transformations. The fermionic field superoperators naturally arise from the univalence (fermion-parity) superselection rule of quantum mechanics for the total system of quantum dot plus reservoirs. Expressed in these field superoperators, the causal structure of the perturbation theory for the effective time-evolution superoperator kernel becomes explicit. Using the constraints of the causal structure, we construct a parametrization of the exact effective time-evolution kernel for which we analytically find the eigenvectors and eigenvalues in terms of a minimal set of only 30 independent coefficients. The causal structure also implies the existence of a fermion-parity protected eigenvector of the exact Liouvillian, explaining a recently reported result on adiabatic driving [Contreras-Pulido et al., Phys. Rev. B 85, 075301 (2012)] and generalizing it to arbitrary order in the tunnel coupling $\ensuremath{\Gamma}$. Furthermore, in the wide-band limit, the causal representation exponentially reduces the number of diagrams for the time-evolution kernel. The remaining diagrams can be identified simply by their topology and are manifestly independent of the energy cutoff term by term. By an exact reformulation of this series, we integrate out all infinite-temperature effects, obtaining an expansion targeting only the nontrivial, finite-temperature corrections, and the exactly conserved transport current follows directly from the time-evolution kernel. From this new series, the previously formulated RT-RG equations are obtained naturally. We perform a complete one-plus-two-loop RG analysis at finite voltage and magnetic field, while systematically accounting for the dependence of all renormalized quantities on both the quantum dot and reservoir frequencies. Using the second quantization in Liouville space and symmetry restrictions, we obtain analytical RT-RG equations, which can be solved numerically in an efficient way, and we extensively study the model parameter space, excluding the Kondo regime where the one-plus-two-loop approach is obviously invalid. The incorporated renormalization effects result in an enhancement of the inelastic cotunneling peak, even at a voltage $\ensuremath{\sim}$magnetic field $\ensuremath{\sim}$tunnel coupling $\ensuremath{\Gamma}$. Moreover, we find a tunnel-induced nonlinearity of the stability diagrams (Coulomb diamonds) at finite voltage, both in the single-electron tunneling and inelastic cotunneling regime.