Letter abstract


Nature Physics 2, 460 - 464 (2006)
doi:10.1038/nphys340

Subject Categories: Condensed-matter physics | Electronics, photonics and device physics | Nanotechnology

Non-equilibrium singlet–triplet Kondo effect in carbon nanotubes

J. Paaske1, A. Rosch2, P. Wölfle3, N. Mason4,5, C. M. Marcus5 and J. Nygård1

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The Kondo effect is a many-body phenomenon arising due to conduction electrons scattering off a localized spin1. Coherent spin-flip scattering off such a quantum impurity correlates the conduction electrons, and at low temperature this leads to a zero-bias conductance anomaly2, 3. This has become a common signature in bias spectroscopy of single-electron transistors, observed in GaAs quantum dots4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 as well as in various single-molecule transistors10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Although the zero-bias Kondo effect is well established, the extent to which Kondo correlations persist in non-equilibrium situations where inelastic processes induce decoherence remains uncertain. Here we report on a pronounced conductance peak observed at finite bias voltage in a carbon-nanotube quantum dot in the spin-singlet ground state. We explain this finite-bias conductance anomaly by a non-equilibrium Kondo effect involving excitations into a spin-triplet state. Excellent agreement between calculated and measured nonlinear conductance is obtained, thus strongly supporting the correlated nature of this non-equilibrium resonance.

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  1. The Niels Bohr Institute & The Nano-Science Center, University of Copenhagen, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
  2. Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität zu Köln, 50937 Köln, Germany
  3. Institut für Theorie der Kondensierten Materie, Universität Karlsruhe, 76128 Karlsruhe, Germany
  4. Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801-3080, USA
  5. Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 0213, USA

Correspondence to: J. Paaske1 e-mail: paaske@fys.ku.dk

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