Effect of assisted hopping on thermopower in an interacting quantum dot

Abstract

We investigate the electrical conductance and thermopower of a quantum dot tunnel coupled to external leads described by an extension of the Anderson impurity model which takes into account the assisted hopping processes, i.e., the occupancy-dependence of the tunneling amplitudes. We provide analytical understanding based on scaling arguments and the Schrieffer–Wolff transformation, corroborated by detailed numerical calculations using the numerical renormalization group method. The assisted hopping modifies the coupling to the two-particle state, which shifts the Kondo exchange coupling constant and exponentially reduces or enhances the Kondo temperature, breaks the particle-hole symmetry, and strongly affects the thermopower. We discuss the gate-voltage and temperature dependence of the transport properties in various regimes. For a particular value of the assisted hopping parameter we find peculiar discontinuous behaviour in the mixed-valence regime. Near this value, we find very high Seebeck coefficient. We show that, quite generally, the thermopower is a highly sensitive probe of assisted hopping and Kondo correlations.

Keywords

• thermopower
• quantum dot
• assisted hopping
• Kondo
• 72.15.Jf
• 72.15.Qm