Energy gaps and interaction blockade in confined quantum systems

Abstract

Many-body effects in confined quantum systems pose a challenging problem due to the simultaneous presence of particle-particle interactions and spatial inhomogeneity. Here we investigate universal properties of strongly confined particles that turn out to be dramatically different from what is observed for electrons in atoms and molecules. We show that for a large class of harmonically confined systems, including small quantum dots and optically trapped atoms, many-body particle addition and removal energies, and energy gaps, can accurately be obtained from single-particle eigenvalues. Transport blockade phenomena are related to the derivative discontinuity of the exchange-correlation functional. This implies that they occur very generally, with Coulomb blockade being a particular realization of a more general phenomenon. In particular, we predict van-der-Waals blockade in cold atom gases in traps.

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• One Dimensional Mimicking of Electronic Structure: The Case for Exponentials
• Transport and interaction blockade of cold bosonic atoms in a triple-well potential
• Modeling of cotunneling in quantum dot systems
• A multideterminant assessment of mean field methods for the description of electron transfer in the weak coupling regime
• Cold Fermionic Atoms in Two-Dimensional Traps -- Pairing versus Hund's Rule
• Screening effects in a density functional theory based description of molecular junctions in the Coulomb blockade regime
• Total Current Blockade in an Ultra-Cold Dipolar Quantum Wire
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• Fundamental gaps of quantum dots on the cheap
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• Density-functional approach to the band gaps of finite and periodic two-dimensional systems
• Atomic Confinement Potentials and the Generation of Numerical Atomic Orbitals