Effect of confinement potential shape on the electronic, thermodynamic, magnetic and transport properties of a GaAs quantum dot at finite temperature.

The effect of the shape of the confinement potential on the electronic, thermodynamic, magnetic and transport properties of a GaAs quantum dot is studied using the power-exponential potential model with steepness parameter p. The average energy, heat capacity, magnetic susceptibility and persistent current are calculated using the canonical ensemble approach at low temperature. It is shown that for soft confinement, the average energy depends strongly on p while it is almost independent of p for hard confinement. The heat capacity is found to be independent of the shape and depth of the confinement potential at low temperatures and for the magnetic field considered. It is shown that the system undergoes a paramagnetic-diamagnetic transition at a critical value of the magnetic field. It is furthermore shown that for low values of the potential depth, the system is always diamagnetic irrespective of the shape of the potential if the magnetic field exceeds a certain value. For a range of the magnetic field, there exists a window of p values in which a re-entrant behavior into the diamagnetic phase can occur. Finally, it is shown that the persistent current in the present quantum dot is diamagnetic in nature and its magnitude increases with the depth of the dot potential but is independent of p for the parameters considered.