Kondo blockade due to quantum interference in single-molecule junctions

Abstract

Molecular electronics offers unique scientific and technological possibilities, resulting from both the nanometre scale of the devices and their reproducible chemical complexity. Two fundamental yet different effects, with no classical analogue, have been demonstrated experimentally in single-molecule junctions: quantum interference due to competing electron transport pathways, and the Kondo effect due to entanglement from strong electronic interactions. Here we unify these phenomena, showing that transport through a spin-degenerate molecule can be either enhanced or blocked by Kondo correlations, depending on molecular structure, contacting geometry and applied gate voltages. An exact framework is developed, in terms of which the quantum interference properties of interacting molecular junctions can be systematically studied and understood. We prove that an exact Kondo-mediated conductance node results from destructive interference in exchange-cotunneling. Nonstandard temperature dependences and gate-tunable conductance peaks/nodes are demonstrated for prototypical molecular junctions, illustrating the intricate interplay of quantum effects beyond the single-orbital paradigm.

13 pages with 5 figures + supplementary information (11 pages with 2 figures)

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• Quantum simulation of an exotic quantum critical point in a two-site charge Kondo circuit
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• Thermometry of Strongly Correlated Fermionic Quantum Systems using Impurity Probes
• Variational principle for quantum impurity systems in and out of equilibrium: application to Kondo problems
• Wiedemann-Franz law in a non-Fermi liquid and Majorana central charge: Thermoelectric transport in a two-channel Kondo system
• Spiro-Conjugated Molecular Junctions: between Jahn-Teller Distortion and Destructive Quantum Interference
• Machine learning effective models for quantum systems
• Automatic Differentiable Numerical Renormalization Group
• Rigorous Wilsonian Renormalization Group for impurity models with a spectral gap
• Kondo-Zeno crossover in the dynamics of a monitored quantum dot
• Theoretical model for multi-orbital Kondo screening in strongly correlated molecules with several unpaired electrons
• Graph-theoretical evaluation of the inelastic propensity rules for molecules with destructive quantum interference
• Full counting statistics of the two-stage Kondo effect
• Magnetically-Tuned Kondo Effect in a Molecular Double Quantum Dot: Role of the Anisotropic Exchange
• Electric and heat transport in a charge two-channel Kondo device
• Kondo-assisted switching between three conduction states in capacitively coupled quantum dots
• Critical Quantum Sensing: a tutorial on parameter estimation near quantum phase transitions
• Many-Body Coherence in Quantum Transport
• Unsupervised Learning of Effective Quantum Impurity Models