Hysteretic behavior in weakly coupled double-dot transport in the spin blockade regime

J. Inarrea, C. Lopez-Monis, A. H. MacDonald, G. Platero

Published 2007-12-25Version 1

Double quantum dot systems in the spin blockade regime exhibit leakage currents that have been attributed to the Hyperfine interaction. We model weakly coupled double-dot transport using a rate equation approach which accounts for Hyperfine flip-flop transitions. The rate equations allow us to obtain self-consistently the time evolution for electronic charge occupations and for the nuclei polarizations in each dot. We analyze the current in the spin blockade region as a function of magnetic field and observe hysteretic behavior for fields corresponding to the crossing between triplet and singlet states.