Three-body Fermi-liquid corrections for Andreev transport through quantum dots

Abstract

We study crossed Andreev reflection occurring in quantum dots connected to one superconducting lead and two normal leads at low temperatures $T$. Specifically, we derive an exact formula for the conductance up to order $T^2$ in the large superconducting gap limit, which is expressed in terms of the transmission probabilities of Cooper pairs and interacting Bogoliubov quasiparticles. Our formulation is based on the latest version of Fermi-liquid theory for the Anderson impurity model, which has clarified the quasiparticle energy shifts of order $ω^2$ and $T^2$ -- namely, corrections of the same order as those arising from the finite lifetime of quasiparticles -- can be expressed exactly in terms of three-body correlations of impurity electrons. We also demonstrate how the three-body contributions evolve and affect the Cooper-pair tunneling as the Andreev level moves away from the Fermi level, using the numerical renormalization group approach. The results show that the Cooper-pair contribution to the $T^2$ terms of the local and nonlocal conductances becomes comparable to the Bogoliubov-quasiparticle contribution in the parameter region, in which superconducting proximity effects dominate over the Kondo effect.