No Arabic abstract
We analyze the heat current flowing across interacting quantum dots within the Coulomb blockade regime. Power can be generated by either voltage or temperature biases. In the former case, we find nonlinear contributions to the Peltier effect that are dominated by conventional Joule heating for sufficiently high voltages. In the latter case, the differential thermal conductance shows maxima or minima depending on the energy level position. Furthermore, we discuss departures from the Kelvin-Onsager reciprocity relation beyond linear response.
We investigate the nonlinear regime of charge and energy transport through Coulomb-blockaded quantum dots. We discuss crossed effects that arise when electrons move in response to thermal gradients (Seebeck effect) or energy flows in reaction to voltage differences (Peltier effect). We find that the differential thermoelectric conductance shows a characteristic Coulomb butterfly structure due to charging effects. Importantly, we show that experimentally observed thermovoltage zeros are caused by the activation of Coulomb resonances at large thermal shifts. Furthermore, the power dissipation asymmetry between the two attached electrodes can be manipulated with the applied voltage, which has implications for the efficient design of nanoscale coolers.
We report measurements of spin transitions for GaAs quantum dots in the Coulomb blockade regime, and compare ground and excited state transport spectroscopy to direct measurements of the spin polarization of emitted current. Transport spectroscopy reveals both spin-increasing and spin-decreasing transitions as well as higher-spin ground states, and allows g-factors to be measured down to a single electron. The spin of emitted current in the Coulomb blockade regime, measured using spin-sensitive electron focusing, is found to be polarized along the direction of the applied magnetic field regardless of the ground state spin transition.
Serial double quantum dots created in semiconductor nanostructures provide a versatile platform for investigating two-electron spin quantum states, which can be tuned by electrostatic gating and an external magnetic field. In this work, we directly measure the supercurrent reversal between adjacent charge states of an InAs nanowire double quantum dot with superconducting leads, in good agreement with theoretical models. In the even charge parity sector, we observe a supercurrent blockade with increasing magnetic field, corresponding to the spin singlet to triplet transition. Our results demonstrate a direct spin to supercurrent conversion, the superconducting equivalent of the Pauli spin blockade. This effect can be exploited in hybrid quantum architectures coupling the quantum states of spin systems and superconducting circuits.
Quantum mechanics and Coulomb interaction dictate the behavior of small circuits. The thermal implications cover fundamental topics from quantum control of heat to quantum thermodynamics, with prospects of novel thermal machines and an ineluctably growing influence on nanocircuit engineering. Experimentally, the rare observations thus far include the universal thermal conductance quantum and heat interferometry. However, evidences for many-body thermal effects paving the way to markedly different heat and electrical behaviors in quantum circuits remain wanting. Here we report on the observation of the Coulomb blockade of electronic heat flow from a small metallic circuit node, beyond the widespread Wiedemann-Franz law paradigm. We demonstrate this thermal many-body phenomenon for perfect (ballistic) conduction channels to the node, where it amounts to the universal suppression of precisely one quantum of conductance for the transport of heat, but none for electricity. The inter-channel correlations that give rise to such selective heat current reduction emerge from local charge conservation, in the floating node over the full thermal frequency range ($lesssim$temperature$times k_mathrm{B}/h$). This observation establishes the different nature of the quantum laws for thermal transport in nanocircuits.
Coulomb blockaded transport of topological superconducting nanowires provides an opportunity to probe the localization of states at both ends of the system in a two-terminal geometry. In addition, it provides a way for checking for subgap states away from the leads. At the same time, Coulomb blockade transport is difficult to analyze because of the interacting nature of the problem arising from the nonperturbative Coulomb interaction inherent in the phenomenon. Here we show that the Coulomb blockade transport can be modeled at the same level of complexity as quantum point contact tunneling that has routinely been used in mesoscopic physics to understand nanowire experiments provided we consider the regime where the tunneling rate is below the equilibration rate of the nanowire. This assumption leads us to a generalized Meir-Wingreen formula for the tunnel conductance which we use to study various features of the nanowire such as Andreev bound states, self-energy, and soft gap. We anticipate that our theory will provide a route to interpret Coulomb blockade transport in hybrid Majorana systems as resulting from features of the nanowire, such as Andreev bound states and soft gaps.