Thermal transport controlled by intra- and inter-dot Coulomb interactions in sequential and cotunneling serially-coupled double quantum dots

Abstract

We study thermoelectric transport through a serial double quantum dot (DQD) coupled to two metallic leads with different thermal energies. We take into account the electron sequential and cotunneling effects via different master equation approaches. In the absence of intra- and inter-dot Coulomb interactions, a small peak in thermoelectric and heat currents is found for $E_{\rm L} \text{=} E_{\rm R}$ indicating the Coulomb blockade DQD regime, where $E_{\rm L}(E_{\rm R})$ is the energy of the state of the left(right) quantum dot. In the presence of intra- and inter-dot Coulomb interactions with strengths U$_{\rm intra}$, and U$_{\rm inter}$, respectively, avoided crossings or resonance energies between the intra- and the inter-dot two-electron states, 2ES, are found. These resonances induce extra transport channels through the DQD leading to strong side peaks in the thermoelectric and heat currents at $ E_{\rm L} \text{-} E_{\rm R} = \pm (U_{\rm intra} \text{-} U_{\rm inter})$ in addition to the main peak generated at $E_{\rm L} \text{=} E_{\rm R}$. The current side peaks are enhanced by increased strength of the Coulomb interactions. Interestingly, the current side peaks are enhanced when cotunneling terms are considered in which the resonances of the 2ESs assist the electron cotunneling process through the system. Furthermore, the issue of coherences is carefully checked in the DQD-leads system via different approaches to the master equation, which are the Pauli, the Redfield, a first order Lindblad, and the first- and second order von-Neumann methods. We realize that the Pauli method gives a wrong results for the thermoelectric transport when the role of the coherences is relevant.