Magnetic field switching in parallel quantum dots

¹  State Key Laboratory for Superlattices and Microstructures, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences - P.O. Box 912, Beijing 100083, China
²  National Center for Theoretical Science - Tainan, Taiwan 70101, ROC
³  Department of Physics and Center for Quantum Information Science, National Cheng Kung University Tainan, Taiwan 70101, ROC
⁴  Department of Particle Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science - Rehovot 76100, Israel

Corresponding author: Shmuel.Gurvitz@weizmann.ac.il

Received: 5 August 2009
Accepted: 13 October 2009

Abstract

We show that the Coulomb blockade in parallel dots pierced by magnetic flux Φ completely blocks the resonant current for any value of Φ except for integer multiples of the flux quantum . This non-analytic (switching) dependence of the current on Φ arises only when the dot states that carry the current are of the same energy. The time needed to reach the steady state, however, diverges when .