Electron Pair Resonance in the Coulomb Blockade

Abstract

We study many-body corrections to the cotunneling current via a localized state with energy $ε_d$ at large bias voltages $V$. We show that the transfer of {\em electron pairs}, enabled by the Coulomb repulsion in the localized level, results in ionization resonance peaks in the third derivative of the current with respect to $V$, centered at $eV=\pm 2ε_d/3$. Our results predict the existence of previously unnoticed structure within Coulomb-blockade diamonds.

5 pages, 4 figures