Regimes of correlated hopping via a two-site interacting chain

Abstract

Inelastic transport of electrons through a two-impurity chain is studied theoretically with account of intersite Coulomb interaction, U. Both limits of ohmic transport (at low bias) and strongly non-ohmic transport (at high bias) are considered. We demonstrate that correlations, induced by a finite U, in conjunction with conventional Hubbard correlations, give rise to a distinct transport regime, with current governed by two-electron hops. This regime realizes when a single-electron hop onto the chain and a single-electron hop out of the chain are both ``blocked'' due to the finite U, so that conventional correlated sequential transport is impossible. The regime of two-electron hops manifests itself in the form of an additional step in the current-voltage characteristics, I(V).

arXiv comment10 pages, 6 figures; final version, minor changes

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Apparent power-law behavior of conductance in disordered quasi-one-dimensional systems
• Hopping transport in systems of finite thickness or length