Effect of assisted hopping on thermopower in an interacting quantum dot

We investigate the electrical conductance and thermopower of a quantum dot tunnel coupled to external leads described by an extension of the Anderson impurity model which takes into account the assisted hopping processes, i.e., the occupancy-dependence of the tunneling amplitudes. We provide analytical understanding based on scaling arguments and the Schrieffer-Wolff transformation, corroborated by detailed numerical calculations using the numerical renormalization group (NRG) method. The assisted hopping modifies the coupling to the two-particle state, which shifts the Kondo exchange coupling constant and exponentially reduces or enhances the Kondo temperature, breaks the particle-hole symmetry, and strongly affects the thermopower. We discuss the gate-voltage and temperature dependence of the transport properties in various regimes. For a particular value of the assisted hopping parameter we find peculiar discontinuous behaviour in the mixed-valence regime. Near this value, we find very high Seebeck coefficient. We show that, quite generally, the thermopower is a highly sensitive probe of assisted hopping and Kondo correlations.

Transport through quantum dots with magnetic impurities

We analyze the electronic transport through a quantum dot that contains a magnetic impurity. The coherent transport of electrons is governed by the quantum confinement inside the dot, but is also influenced by the exchange interaction with the impurity. The interplay between the two gives raise to the singlet-triplet splitting of the energy levels available for the tunneling electron. In this paper, we focus on the charge fluctuations and, more precisely, the height of the conductance peaks. We show that the conductance peaks corresponding to the triplet levels are three times higher than those corresponding to singlet levels, if electronic correlations are neglected (for non-interacting dots, when an exact solution can be obtained). Next, we consider the Coulomb repulsion and the many-body correlations. In this case, the singlet/triplet peak height ratio has a complex behavior. Usually the highest peak corresponds to the state that is lowest in energy (ground state), regardless if it is singlet or triplet. In the end, we get an insight on the Kondo regime for such a system, and show the formation of three Kondo peaks. We use the equation of motion method with appropriate decoupling.