Mesoscopic Stoner Instability in Open Quantum Dots: Suppression of Coleman-Weinberg Mechanism by Electron Tunneling

The mesoscopic Stoner instability is an intriguing manifestation of symmetry breaking in isolated metallic quantum dots, underlined by the competition between single-particle energy and Heisenberg exchange interaction. Here we study this phenomenon in the presence of tunnel coupling to a reservoir....

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysical review letters Vol. 124; no. 19; p. 196801
Main Authors Burmistrov, I S, Gefen, Y, Shapiro, D S, Shnirman, A
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 15.05.2020
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Summary:The mesoscopic Stoner instability is an intriguing manifestation of symmetry breaking in isolated metallic quantum dots, underlined by the competition between single-particle energy and Heisenberg exchange interaction. Here we study this phenomenon in the presence of tunnel coupling to a reservoir. We analyze the spin susceptibility of electrons on the quantum dot for different values of couplings and temperature. Our results indicate the existence of a "quantum phase transition" at a critical value of the tunneling coupling, which is determined by the Stoner-enhanced exchange interaction. This quantum phase transition is a manifestation of the suppression of the Coleman-Weinberg mechanism of symmetry breaking, induced by coupling to the reservoir.
ISSN:1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.196801