Transport through quantum dots and single-molecule devices
by
TDLI Meeting Room 202
When nanoscale components are incorporated into external circuits, electronic transport can exhibit striking quantum phenomena with no classical analogue -- such as entanglement, quantum interference, and fractionalization. In this seminar I discuss recent theoretical progress in understanding two related classes of nanoelectronic device: semiconductor quantum dots and single-molecule junctions. The new charge-Kondo quantum dot design paradigm allows unprecedented opportunities to engineer exotic quantum states, with beautiful agreement between experiment and theory, and an outlook towards strongly correlated lattice models. On the other hand, strong correlation physics in molecular junctions is obfuscated by orbital complexity. Here I discuss certain exact results, including novel predictions for a 'Kondo Blockade', and a general strategy for treating realistic molecular junctions based on renormalization group solutions to effective models obtained by machine learning.
[1] Science, 360, 1315 (2018)
[2] Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 157202 (2016)
[3] Nature Communications, 8, 15210 (2017)
Prof Andrew Mitchell is a theoretical physicist at University College in Dublin, Ireland, with broad interests in condensed matter theory -- especially strongly correlated electrons / many-body physics, and nanoelectronics. He is a Laureate of the Irish Research Council, and has current research interests in theory and applications of molecular electronics and semiconductor quantum dot devices. Prof Mitchell gained his PhD in theoretical physics from Oxford University in the UK in 2009, before undertaking postdoctoral Fellowships at the Universities of Cologne in Germany, Oxford in the UK, and Utrecht in the Netherlands. He has been tenured faculty at UC Dublin since 2016.
