2016/01/31 by Kristen Kaasbjerg, Antti-Pekka Jauho, Antti‐Pekka Jauho
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advancements in Semiconductor Devices and Circuit Design #Condensed matter physics #Coulomb #Coulomb barrier #Coulomb blockade #Coulomb's constant #Current (fluid) #Drag #Electron #Graphene research and applications #Mechanics #Mesoscopic physics #Physics #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum dot #Quantum mechanics #Quantum tunnelling #Transistor #Voltage #cond-mat.mes-hall
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.116.196801
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 196801 (2016) · 6 pages, 4 figures + supplementary. Published version
arxiv created 2016/05/04 · openalex publication_date 2016/05/10 · arxiv updated 2016/05/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study theoretically Coulomb drag in capacitively coupled quantum dots (CQDs)-a bias-driven dot coupled to an unbiased dot where transport is due to Coulomb mediated energy transfer drag. To this end, we introduce a master-equation approach that accounts for higher-order tunneling (cotunneling) processes as well as energy-dependent lead couplings, and identify a mesoscopic Coulomb drag mechanism driven by nonlocal multielectron cotunneling processes. Our theory establishes the conditions for a nonzero drag as well as the direction of the drag current in terms of microscopic system parameters. Interestingly, the direction of the drag current is not determined by the drive current, but by an interplay between the energy-dependent lead couplings. Studying the drag mechanism in a graphene-based CQD heterostructure, we show that the predictions of our theory are consistent with recent experiments on Coulomb drag in CQD systems.