Effects of electronic correlations and magnetic field on a molecular ring out of equilibrium

We study the effects of electron-electron interactions on the steady-state characteristics of a hexagonal molecular ring in a magnetic field as a model for a benzene molecular junction. The system is driven out of equilibrium by applying a bias voltage across two metallic leads. We employ a model Hamiltonian approach to evaluate the effects of on-site as well as nearest-neighbor density-density–type interactions in a physically relevant parameter regime. Results for the steady-state current, charge density, and magnetization in three different junction setups (para, meta, and ortho) are presented. Our findings indicate that interactions beyond the mean-field level renormalize voltage thresholds as well as current plateaus. Electron-electron interactions lead to substantial charge redistribution as compared to the mean-field results. We identify a strong response of the circular current on the electronic structure of the metallic leads. Our results are obtained by steady-state cluster perturbation theory, a systematically improvable approximation to study interacting molecular junctions out of equilibrium, even in magnetic fields. Within this framework, general expressions for the current, charge density, and magnetization in the steady state are derived. The method is flexible and fast and can straightforwardly be applied to effective models as obtained from ab initio calculations.