Transport through a multiply connected interacting mesoscopic system using the Keldysh formalism

Abstract

We apply the Keldysh formalism in order to derive a current formula easy to use for a system with many sites, one of which is interacting. The main technical challenge is to deal with the lesser Green's function. It turns out that, in the case of the left-right symmetry, the knowledge of the lesser Green's function is not necessary and an exact current formula can be expressed in terms of retarded Green's functions only. The application is done for a triangular interferometer which gives a good account of the Fano-Kondo effect. It is found that the interference effects, in the context of Kondo correlations, give rise to a point in the parameter space where the conductance is temperature independent. We include a comparison with the results from Ng's ansatz [Phys. Rev. Lett. 70, 3635 (1993)], which are less accurate, but can be used also in the absence of the above mentioned symmetry.