Theory of strong inelastic cotunneling

We develop a theory of the conductance of a quantum dot connected to two leads by single-mode quantum point contacts. If the contacts are in the regime of perfect transmission, the conductance shows no Coulomb blockade oscillations as a function of the gate voltage. In the presence of small reflection in both contacts, the conductance develops small Coulomb blockade oscillations. As the temperature of the system is lowered, the amplitude of the oscillations grows, and eventually sharp periodic peaks in conductance are formed. Away from the centers of the peaks the conductance vanishes at low temperatures as T-2, in agreement with the theory of inelastic cotunneling developed for the weak-tunneling case. Conductance near the center of a peak can be studied using an analogy with the multichannel Kondo problem. In the case of symmetric barriers, the peak conductance at T --> 0 is of the order of <e(2)/(h)over bar>. In the asymmetric case, the peak conductance vanishes linearly in temperature.