Coherent transport in linear arrays of quantum dots: The effects of period doubling and of quasi-periodicity

Abstract

We evaluate the phase-coherent transport of electrons along linear structures of varying length, which are made from two types of potential wells set in either a periodic or a Fibonacci quasi-periodic sequence. The array is described by a tight-binding Hamiltonian and is reduced to an effective dimer by means of a decimation-renormalization method, extended to allow for connection to external metallic leads, and the transmission coefficient is evaluated in a T-matrix-scattering approach. Parallel behaviors are found for the energy dependence of the density of electron states and of the transmittivity of the array. In particular, we explicitly show that on increasing its length the periodic array undergoes a metal–insulator transition near single occupancy per dot, whereas prominent pseudo-gaps emerge away from the band center in the Fibonacci-ordered array.