Aharonov-Bohm oscillations in coupled quantum dots: Effect of electron-electron interactions

Abstract

We theoretically analyze the effect of electron-electron interactions on Aharonov-Bohm (AB) current oscillations in ring-shaped systems with metallic quantum dots pierced by external magnetic field. We demonstrate that electron-electron interactions suppress the amplitude of AB oscillations $I_{AB}$ at all temperatures down to T=0 and formulate quantitative predictions which can be verified in future experiments. We argue that the main physical reason for such interaction-induced suppression of $I_{AB}$ is electron dephasing while Coulomb blockade effects remain insignificant in the case of metallic quantum dots considered here. We also emphasize a direct relation between our results and the so-called $P(E)$-theory describing tunneling of interacting electrons.

12 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Quantum decoherence of interacting electrons in arrays of quantum dots and diffusive conductors
• Weak localization in a system with a barrier: Dephasing and weak Coulomb blockade

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Persistent currents in nanorings and quantum decoherence by Coulomb interaction