Kondo temperature and screening extension in a double quantum dot system

In this work we use the slave-boson mean-field approximation at finite U to study the effects of spin-spin correlations in the transport properties of two quantum dots coupled in series to metallic leads. Different quantum regimes of this system are studied in a wide range of the parameter space. The main aspects related to the interplay between the half-filling Kondo effect and the antiferromagnetic correlation between the quantum dots are reviewed. Slave-boson results for conductance, local density of states in the quantum dots, and the renormalized energy parameters are presented. As a different approach to the Kondo physics in a double-dot system, the Kondo cloud extension inside the metallic leads is calculated and its dependence with the interdot coupling is analyzed. In addition, the cloud extension permits the calculation of the Kondo temperature of the double quantum dot. This result is very similar to the corresponding critical temperature T-c, as a function of the parameters of the system, as obtained by using the finite-temperature extension of the slave-boson mean-field approximation.