Nonadiabatic electron pumping through interacting quantum dots

Journal article, 2012

We study nonadiabatic charge pumping through single-level quantum dots taking into account Coulomb interactions. We show how a truncated set of equations of motion can be propagated in time by means of an auxiliary-mode expansion. This formalism is capable of treating time-dependent electronic transport for arbitrary driving parameters. We verify that the proposed method describes very precisely the well-known limit of adiabatic pumping through quantum dots without Coulomb interactions. As an example we discuss pumping driven by short voltage pulses for various interaction strengths. Such finite pulses are particularly suited to investigation of transient nonadiabatic effects, which may also be important for periodic drivings, where they are much more difficult to reveal.