Phonon effects in tunnelling through a double quantum dot molecule

Phonon effects in tunnelling through a double quantum dot molecule are investigated by use of a recently developed technique, which is based on an exact mapping of a many-body electron-phonon interaction problem onto a multichannel one-body problem. The molecule is sandwiched between two ideal electrodes and the electron at each dot of the molecule interacts independently with Einstein phonons. Single-electron transmission rates through the molecule are computed and the nonlinear spectrum obtained shows a structure with many more satellite peaks due to the excitations of phonons. The strength of resonant peaks is found to be strongly dependent on the number of excited phonons. The effects of electron-phonon interaction on the current and shot noise, depending on the voltage bias applied at the two electrodes as well as the potential energy of the molecule, are discussed. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2006