Transient currents of a single molecular junction with a vibrational mode

Abstract

By using a propagation scheme for current matrices and an auxiliary mode expansion method, we investigate the transient dynamics of a single molecular junction coupled with a vibrational mode. Our approach is based on the Anderson-Holstein model and the dressed tunneling approximation for the electronic self-energy in the polaronic regime. The time-dependent currents after a sudden switching on the tunneling to leads and an abrupt upward step bias pulse are calculated. We show that the strong electron-phonon interaction greatly influences the nonlinear response properties of the system, and gives rise to interesting characteristics on the time traces of transient currents.