Inelastic electron relaxation rates caused by Spin M/2 Kondo Impurities

We study a spin S=M/2--Kondo system coupled to electrons in an arbitrary nonequilibrium situation above Kondo temperature. Coupling to hot electrons leads to an increased inverse lifetime of pseudo particles, related to the Korringa width. This in turn is responsible for the increased inelastic relaxation rates of the electronic system. The rates are related to spin--spin correlation functions which are determined using a projection operator formalism. The results generalize recent findings for S=1/2--Kondo impurities which have been used to describe energy relaxation experiments in disordered mesoscopic wires.Comment: Brief Report, 4 page

Conductance of the Single Electron Transistor for Arbitrary Tunneling Strength

We study the temperature and gate voltage dependence of the conductance of the single electron transistor focusing on highly conducting devices. Electron tunneling is treated nonperturbatively by means of path integral Monte Carlo techniques and the conductance is determined from the Kubo formula. A regularized singular value decomposition scheme is employed to calculate the conductance from imaginary time simulation data. Our findings are shown to bridge between available analytical results in the semiclassical and perturbative limits and are found to explain recent experimental results in a regime not accessible by earlier methods.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Charge Fluctuations in the Single Electron Box

Quantum fluctuations of the charge in the single electron box are investigated. Based on a diagrammatic expansion we calculate the average island charge number and the effective charging energy in third order in the tunneling conductance. Near the degeneracy point where the energy of two charge states coincides, the perturbative approach fails, and we explicitly resum the leading logarithmic divergencies to all orders. The predictions for zero temperature are compared with Monte Carlo data and with recent renormalization group results. While good agreement between the third order result and numerical data justifies the perturbative approach in most of the parameter regime relevant experimentally, near the degeneracy point and at zero temperature the resummation is shown to be insufficient to describe strong tunneling effects quantitatively. We also determine the charge noise spectrum employing a projection operator technique. Former perturbative and semiclassical results are extended by the approach.Comment: 20 pages, 15 figure

High Temperature Conductance of the Single Electron Transistor

The linear conductance of the single electron transistor is determined in the high temperature limit. Electron tunneling is treated nonperturbatively by means of a path integral formulation and the conductance is obtained from Kubo's formula. The theoretical predictions are valid for arbitrary conductance and found to explain recent experimental data.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Effect of the Tunneling Conductance on the Coulomb Staircase

Quantum fluctuations of the charge in the single electron box are investigated. The rounding of the Coulomb staircase caused by virtual electron tunneling is determined by perturbation theory up to third order in the tunneling conductance and compared with precise Monte Carlo data computed with a new algorithm. The remarkable agreement for large conductance indicates that presently available experimental data on Coulomb charging effects in metallic nanostructures can be well explained by finite order perturbative results.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Nonequilibrium Electron Distribution in Presence of Kondo Impurities

We study the energy relaxation of quasiparticles in voltage biased mesoscopic wires in presence of magnetic impurities. The renormalization of the exchange interaction of Kondo impurities coupled to conduction electrons is extended to the case of a nonequilibrium electron distribution, which is determined self-consistently from a Boltzmann equation with a collision term due to Kondo impurity mediated electron-electron scattering. The approach leads to predictions in quantitative agreement with recent experiments by Pothier et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 3490 (1997)].Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure