Transport through a vibrating quantum dot: Polaronic effects

Abstract

We present a Green's function based treatment of the effects of electron-phonon coupling on transport through a molecular quantum dot in the quantum limit. Thereby we combine an incomplete variational Lang-Firsov approach with a perturbative calculation of the electron-phonon self energy in the framework of generalised Matsubara Green functions and a Landauer-type transport description. Calculating the ground-state energy, the dot single-particle spectral function and the linear conductance at finite carrier density, we study the low-temperature transport properties of the vibrating quantum dot sandwiched between metallic leads in the whole electron-phonon coupling strength regime. We discuss corrections to the concept of an anti-adiabatic dot polaron and show how a deformable quantum dot can act as a molecular switch.

10 pages, 8 figures, Proceedings of "Progress in Nonequilibrium Green's Function IV" Conference, Glasgow 2009

References in corpus (5)

• Molecular Transport Junctions: Vibrational Effects
• Phonon Driven Nonlinear Electrical Behavior in Molecular Devices
• Chebyshev approach to quantum systems coupled to a bath
• Spectral functions of the spinless Holstein model
• Localized polarons and doorway vibrons in finite quantum structures

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Vibrationally Induced Decoherence in Single-Molecule Junctions
• Finite-temperature density-matrix renormalization group method for electron-phonon systems: Thermodynamics and Holstein-polaron spectral functions
• Non-equilibrium transport through molecular junctions in the quantum regime
• Effect of broadening in the weak coupling limit of vibrationally coupled electron transport through molecular junctions and the analogy to quantum dot circuit QED systems
• Nonlinear adiabatic response of interacting quantum dots
• Effective-Hamiltonian theory: An approximation to the equilibrium state of open quantum systems
• Phonon-affected steady-state transport through molecular quantum dots
• Charge density wave breakdown in a heterostructure with electron-phonon coupling