We explore the inelastic electron-scattering cross section off a metallic quantum dot close to the Stoner instability. We focus on the regime of strong Coulomb blockade in which the scattering cross section is dominated by the cotunneling processes. For large enough exchange interaction, the quantum dot acquires a finite total spin in the ground state. In this so-called mesoscopic Stoner instability regime, we find that at low enough temperatures, the inelastic scattering cross section (including the contribution due to an elastic electron spin flip) for an electron with an energy close to the chemical potential is different from the case of a magnetic impurity with the same spin. This difference stems from (i) the presence of low-lying many-body states of a quantum dot and (ii) the correlations of the tunneling amplitudes. Our results provide a possible explanation for the absence of the dephasing rate saturation at low temperatures in a recent experiment [N. Teneh, A. Yu. Kuntsevich, V. M. Pudalov, and M. Reznikov, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 226403 (2012)] in which the existence of local spin droplets in disordered electron liquid has been unraveled.
We use the framework setup recently to compute nonperturbatively inelastic scattering from quantum impurities [G. Zar\'and et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 107204 (2004)] to study the energy dependence of the single-particle
S matrix and the inelastic scattering cross section for a number of quantum impurity models. We study the case of the spin
S=1∕2 two-channel Kondo model, the Anderson model, and the usual
S=1∕2 single-channel Kondo model. We discuss the difference between non-Fermi-liquid and Fermi-liquid models and study how a crossover between the non-Fermi-liquid and Fermi-liquid regimes appears in the case of channel anisotropy for the
S=1∕2 two-channel Kondo model. We show that for the most elementary non-Fermi-liquid system, the two-channel Kondo model, half of the scattering remains inelastic even at the Fermi energy. Details of the derivation of the reduction formulas and a simple path integral approach to connect the
T matrix to local correlation functions are also presented.
The Luttinger liquid model, which describes interacting electrons in a single-channel quantum wire, is completely integrable in the absence of disorder and as such does not exhibit any relaxation to equilibrium. We consider relaxation processes induced by inelastic electron-electron interactions in a disordered Luttinger liquid, focusing on the equilibration rate and its essential differences from the electron-electron scattering rate as well as the rate of phase relaxation. In the first part of the paper, we review the basic concepts in a disordered Luttinger liquid at equilibrium. These include the elastic renormalization, dephasing, and interference-induced localization. In the second part, we formulate a conceptually important framework for systematically studying the nonequilibrium properties of a strongly correlated (non-Fermi) Luttinger liquid. We derive a coupled set of kinetic equations for the fermionic and bosonic distribution functions that describe the evolution of a nonequilibrium Luttinger liquid. Remarkably, the energy equilibration rate in the conducting disordered quantum wire (at sufficiently high temperature, when the localization effects are suppressed by dephasing) is shown to be on the order of the rate of elastic scattering off disorder, independent of the interaction constant and temperature.
We study a system of two tunnel-coupled quantum dots with the first dot containing interacting electrons (described by the universal Hamiltonian) not subject to spin-orbit coupling whereas the second contains noninteracting electrons subject to spin-orbit coupling. We focus on describing the behavior of the system near the Stoner transition. Close to the critical point quantum fluctuations become important and the system enters a quantum-critical regime. The large-
N approximation allows us to calculate physical quantities reliably even in this strongly fluctuating regime. In particular, we find a scaling function to describe the crossover of the quasiparticle decay rate between the renormalized Fermi-liquid regime and the quantum-critical regime.
We study the non-equilibrium dynamics of a spinful single-orbital quantum dot with an incorporated quantum mechanical spin-1/2 magnetic impurity. Due to the spin degeneracy, double occupancy is allowed, and Coulomb interaction together with the exchange coupling of the magnetic impurity influence the dynamics. By extending the iterative summation of real-time path integrals (ISPI) to this coupled system, we monitor the time-dependent non-equilibrium current and the impurity spin polarization to determine features of the time-dependent non-equilibrium dynamics. We particulary focus on the deep quantum regime, where all time and energy scales are of the same order of magnitude and no small parameter is available. We observe a significant influence of the non-equilibrium decay of the impurity spin polarization both in the presence and in the absence of Coulomb interaction. The exponential relaxation is faster for larger bias voltages, electron–impurity interactions and temperatures. We show that the exact relaxation rate deviates from the corresponding perturbative result. In addition, we study in detail the impurity's back action on the charge current and find a reduction of the stationary current for increasing coupling to the impurity. Moreover, our approach allows us to systematically distinguish mean-field Coulomb and impurity effects from the influence of quantum fluctuations and flip-flop scattering, respectively. In fact, we find a local maximum of the current for a finite Coulomb interaction due to the presence of the impurity.
Quantum dot structures confine electrons in a small region of space. Some properties of semiconductor quantum dots, such as the discrete energy levels and shell filling effects visible in addition spectra, have analogies to those of atoms and indeed dots are sometimes referred to as 'artificial atoms'. However, atoms and dots show some fundamental differences due to electron correlations. For real atoms, the kinetic energy of electrons dominates over their mutual Coulomb repulsion energy and for this reason the independent electron approximation works well. For quantum dots the confining potential may be shallower than that of real atoms leading to lower electron densities and a dominance of mutual Coulomb repulsion over kinetic energy. In this strongly correlated regime the independent electron picture leads to qualitatively incorrect results. This thesis concentrates on few-electron quantum dots in the strongly correlated regime both for quasi-one-dimensional and two-dimensional dots in a square confining potential. In this so-called 'Wigner' regime the ground-state electronic charge density is localised near positions of classical electrostatic minima and the interacting electronic spectrum consists of well separated spin multiplets. In the strongly correlated regime the structure of low-energy multiplets is explained by mapping onto lattice models with extended-Hubbard and Heisenberg effective Hamiltonians. The parameters for these effective models are calculated within a Hartree approximation and are shown to reproduce well the exact results obtained by numerical diagonalisation of the full interacting Hamiltonian. Comparison is made between square dots and quantum rings with full rotational symmetry. In the very low-density regime, direct diagonalisation becomes impractical due to excessive computer time for convergence. In this regime a numerical renormalisation group method is applied to one-dimensional dots, enabling effective spin-interactions to be pr
The low-temperature regime of charge-qubit decoherence due to its Coulomb interaction with electrons tunneling through Luttinger liquid quantum-point contact (QPC) is investigated. The study is focused on quantum detector properties of Luttinger liquid QPC. Earlier results on related problems were approximate, up to the second order in small electrostatic coupling between charge qubit and QPC. However, here it is shown that in low- (and zero-) temperature limits the respective perturbative decoherence and acquisition of information timescales both tend to diverge, thus shadowing a true picture of low-temperature quantum detection for such quantum systems. Here it is shown that one can successfully circumvent these difficulties in order to restore a complete and exact picture of low-temperature decoherence and quantum detection for charge qubits measured by arbitrary Luttinger liquid QPC. To do this, here I prove two general mathematical statements [summation (S) theorem and (S) lemma] about exact re-exponentiation of Keldysh-contour ordered
T exponent for an arbitrary Luttinger liquid tunnel Hamiltonian. The resulting exact formulas are believed to be important in a wide range of those Luttinger liquid problems, where real-time quantum field dynamic is crucial. As the result, decoherence and acquisition of information timescales as well as QPC quantum detector efficiency rate are calculated exactly and are shown to have a dramatic dependence on repulsive interaction between electrons in one-dimensional (1D) leads of QPC. In particular, it is found that at temperatures close to zero there exists a certain well-defined threshold value $g\ensuremath{\approx}{g}_{cr}(T)$ of Luttinger liquid correlation parameter
g ($0<g\ensuremath{\le}1$) which serves as a sharp boundary between the region of good (or even perfect) quantum detection at
g<gcr and the region of quantum detection breakdown for
g>gcr. Moreover, this abrupt decrease of QPC quantum detector efficiency
Q with the increase of
g in the close vicinity of value
gcr represents evidence of interaction-dependent instability of all the quantum detection procedures for any Luttinger liquid QPC quantum detector at sufficiently low temperatures
Tcr(g). The reasons behind these effects are discussed. Also, it is shown that the low-temperature detection instability effect is able to explain the large mismatch between expected and observed decoherence timescales in two recent experiments [Gorman et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 090502 (2005); Petersson et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 246804 (2010)] on charge-qubit quantum dynamics.