Coulomb blockade for an oscillating tunnel junction

Abstract

We consider a tunnel junction formed between a fixed electrode and an oscillating one. Accumulation of the charge on the junction capacitor induces a force on the nano-mechanical oscillator. The junction is voltage biased and connected in series with an impedance $Z(\omega )$. We discuss how the picture of Coulomb blockade is modified by the presence of the oscillator. Quantum fluctuations of the mechanical oscillator modify the $I$-$V$ characteristics particularly in the strong Coulomb blockade limit. We show that the oscillator can be taken into account by a simple modification of the effective impedance of the circuit. We discuss in some details the case of a single inductance $Z(\omega )=iL\omega$ and of a constant resistance $Z(\omega )=R$. With little modifications the theory applies also to incoherent transport in Josephson junctions in the tunneling limit.

9 pages

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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Cooling a vibrational mode coupled to a molecular single-electron transistor