A new approach to time-dependent transport through an interacting quantum dot within the Keldysh formalism

The time-dependent transport through a nanoscale device consisting of a single spin-degenerate orbital with on-site Coulomb interaction, coupled to two leads, is investigated. Various gate and bias voltage time dependences are considered. The key and new point lies in the proposed way to avoid the difficulties of the usual heavy computation when dealing with two-time Green's functions within the Keldysh formalism. The time-dependent retarded dot Green's functions are evaluated, in an efficient manner within a non-canonical Hubbard I approximation. Calculations of the time-dependent current are then presented in the wide-band limit for different parameter sets. A comparison between the method and the Hartree-Fock approximation is performed as well. It is shown that the latter cannot account reliably for dynamical aspects of transport phenomena.