Coulomb blockade of tunneling through a double quantum dot

We study the Coulomb blockade of tunneling through a double quantum dot. The temperature dependence of the linear conductance is strongly affected by the interdot tunneling. As the tunneling grows, a crossover from temperature-independent peak conductance to a power-law suppression of conductance at low temperatures is predicted. This suppression is a manifestation of the Anderson orthogonality catastrophe associated with the charge redistribution between the dots, which accompanies the tunneling of an electron into a dot. We find analytically the shapes of the Coulomb blockade peaks in conductance as a function of gate voltage. © 1996 The American Physical Society.