Effect of Electron Interaction on Statistics of Conductance Oscillations in Open Quantum Dots: Does the Dephasing Time Saturate?

Abstract

We perform self-consistent quantum transport calculations in open quantum dots taking into account the effect of electron interaction. We demonstrate that, in the regime of the ultralow temperatures 2 pi kappa BT < or = delta (delta being the mean-level spacing), the electron interaction strongly smears the conductance oscillations and thus significantly affects their statistics. Our calculations are in good quantitative agreement with the observed ultralow temperature statistics of Huibers et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 1917 (1998)]. Our findings question a conventional interpretation of the ultralow temperature saturation of the coherence time in open dots which is based on the noninteracting theories, where the agreement with the experiment is achieved by introducing additional phenomenological channels of dephasing.