Abstract
We study the time evolution and steady state of the charge current in a single-impurity Anderson model, using matrix product states techniques. A nonequilibrium situation is imposed by applying a bias voltage across one-dimensional tight-binding leads. Focusing on particle-hole symmetry, we extract current-voltage characteristics from universal low-bias up to high-bias regimes, where band effects start to play a dominant role. We discuss three quenches, which after strongly quench-dependent transients yield the same steady-state current. Among these quenches we identify those favorable for extracting steady-state observables. The period of short-time oscillations is shown to compare well to real-time renormalization group results for a simpler model of spinless fermions. We find indications that many-body effects play an important role at high-bias voltage and finite bandwidth of the metallic leads. The growth of entanglement entropy after a certain time scale ∝Δ−1 is the major limiting factor for calculating the time evolution. We show that the magnitude of the steady-state current positively correlates with entanglement entropy. The role of high-energy states for the steady-state current is explored by considering a damping term in the time evolution.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 045132 |
Number of pages | 1 |
Journal | Physical Review B |
Volume | 88 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jul 2013 |