Aharonov-Bohm oscillations in coupled quantum dots: Effect of electron-electron interactions

Semenov, Andrew G.; Golubev, Dmitri S.; Zaikin, Andrei D.

Aharonov-Bohm oscillations in coupled quantum dots: Effect of electron-electron interactions

Authors

Semenov, Andrew G.

Golubev, Dmitri S.

Zaikin, Andrei D.

Description

We theoretically analyze the effect of electron-electron interactions on Aharonov-Bohm (AB) current oscillations in ring-shaped systems with metallic quantum dots pierced by external magnetic field. We demonstrate that electron-electron interactions suppress the amplitude of AB oscillations $I_{AB}$ at all temperatures down to T=0 and formulate quantitative predictions which can be verified in future experiments. We argue that the main physical reason for such interaction-induced suppression of $I_{AB}$ is electron dephasing while Coulomb blockade effects remain insignificant in the case of metallic quantum dots considered here. We also emphasize a direct relation between our results and the so-called $P(E)$-theory describing tunneling of interacting electrons.
12 pages, 6 figures