Coulomb Blockade Oscillations in a Double-Dot System

The conductance of two conducting dots coupled by very small capacitances is calculated. It shows remarkable structure as a function of a gate-induced potential V g . At temperatures just below the Coulomb blockade energy, the conductance is found to oscillate periodically with V g . As the temperature is reduced, however, the periodic oscillations give way to quasi-random conductance peaks. This behavior is a result of the incommensurate energy scales required to add charges to the two dots.