Abstract
A combination of ab initio and many-body calculations is utilized to determine the effects of the bonding in Au electrodes on the time dependent current through a quantum dot suddenly shifted into the Kondo regime by a gate voltage. For an asymmetrically coupled system the instantaneous conductance exhibits fluctuations. The frequencies of the fluctuations turn out to be proportional to the energetic separation between the dominating peaks in the density of states and the Fermi level. The chemical bonding in the electrodes, thus, drastically alters the transient current, which can be accessed by ultrafast pump-probe techniques. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.