Theory of the Franck-Condon blockade regime
By Jens Koch, F. von Oppen, A. Andreev. 2006
195 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Strong coupling of electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom entails a low-bias suppression of the current through single-molecule devices, termed the Franck-Condon blockade. In the limit of slow vibrational relaxation, transport in the Franck-Condon-blockade regime proceeds via avalanches of large numbers of electrons, which are interrupted by long waiting times without electron transfer. The avalanches consist of smaller avalanches, leading to a self-similar hierarchy which terminates once the number of transferred electrons per avalanche becomes of the order of unity. Experimental signatures of self-similar avalanche transport are strongly enhanced current (shot) noise, as expressed by giant Fano factors, and a power-law noise spectrum. We develop a theory of the Franck-Condon-blockade regime with particular emphasis on the effects of electron cotunneling through highly excited vibrational states. As opposed to the exponential suppression of sequential tunneling rates for low-lying vibrational states, cotunneling rates suffer only a power-law suppression. This leads to a regime where cotunneling dominates the current for any gate voltage. Including cotunneling within a rate-equation approach to transport, we find that both the Franck-Condon blockade and self-similar avalanche transport remain intact in this regime. We predict that cotunneling leads to absorption-induced vibrational sidebands in the Coulomb-blockaded regime as well as intrinsic telegraph noise near the charge degeneracy point.
Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f183427b659e65ae2f3981720b326626010f9866
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
- F. Evers
- Richard Koryt'ar
- S. Tewari
- J. V. van Ruitenbeek
- Michael Galperin
- Klaus Ensslin
- Mark A. Ratner
- F. von Oppen
In Electrical and Electronic Engineering
- T. O. S. University
- Israel
- Northwestern University School of Chemistry
- Michael Galperin
- Klaus Ensslin
- Mark A. Ratner
- Abraham Nitzan Department of Chemistry
- F. Evers
Citations in the corpus
- Molecular transport junctions: vibrational effects (2006, background): “Finally, it has been pointed out[276, 340] that strong electron-phonon coupling associated with pronounced Franck-Condon blockade behavior leads to”
- Franck–Condon blockade in suspended carbon nanotube quantum dots (2008, background): “Beyond this effect, theory predicts that strong electron–vibron coupling strongly suppresses the current flow at low biases, a collective behaviour known as Franck–Condon blockad”
- Advances and challenges in single-molecule electron transport (2019, background): “The FCB has some remarkable consequences for the charge-carrier dynamics (Koch et al., 2006).”