• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: Thermodynamics of the polaron master equation at finite bias
  • Contributor: Krause, Thilo; Brandes, Tobias; Esposito, Massimiliano; Schaller, Gernot
  • imprint: AIP Publishing, 2015
  • Published in: The Journal of Chemical Physics
  • Language: English
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4916359
  • ISSN: 0021-9606; 1089-7690
  • Keywords: Physical and Theoretical Chemistry ; General Physics and Astronomy
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: <jats:p>We study coherent transport through a double quantum dot. Its two electronic leads induce electronic matter and energy transport and a phonon reservoir contributes further energy exchanges. By treating the system-lead couplings perturbatively, whereas the coupling to vibrations is treated non-perturbatively in a polaron-transformed frame, we derive a thermodynamic consistent low-dimensional master equation. When the number of phonon modes is finite, a Markovian description is only possible when these couple symmetrically to both quantum dots. For a continuum of phonon modes however, also asymmetric couplings can be described with a Markovian master equation. We compute the electronic current and dephasing rate. The electronic current enables transport spectroscopy of the phonon frequency and displays signatures of Franck-Condon blockade. For infinite external bias but finite tunneling bandwidths, we find oscillations in the current as a function of the internal bias due to the electron-phonon coupling. Furthermore, we derive the full fluctuation theorem and show its identity to the entropy production in the system.</jats:p>