Mesoscopic conductors are electronic systems of sizes in between nano- and micrometers, and often of reduced dimensionality. In the phase-coherent regime at low temperatures, the conductance of these devices is governed by quantum interference effects, such as the Aharonov-Bohm effect and conductance fluctuations as prominent examples. While first measurements of quantum charge transport date back to the 1980s, spin phenomena in mesoscopic transport have moved only recently into the focus of attention, as one branch of the field of spintronics. The interplay between quantum coherence with confinement-, disorder- or interaction-effects gives rise to a variety of unexpected spin phenomena in mesoscopic conductors and allows moreover to control and engineer the spin of the charge carriers: spin interference is often the basis for spin-valves, -filters, -switches or -pumps. Their underlying mechanisms may gain relevance on the way to possible future semiconductor-based spin devices.
A quantitative theoretical understanding of spin-dependent mesoscopic transport calls for developing efficient and flexible numerical algorithms, including matrix-reordering techniques within Green function approaches, which we will explain, review and employ.
We present a theory of conductance and noise in generic mesoscopic conductors connected in parallel, and we demonstrate that the additivity of conductance and of shot noise arises as a sole property of the junctions connecting the two (or more) conductors in parallel. Consequences on the functionality of devices based on the Aharonov-Bohm effect are also drawn.
We investigate magnetic-field asymmetries in the linear transport of a mesoscopic conductor interacting with its environment. Interestingly, we find that the interaction between the two systems causes an asymmetry only when the environment is out of equilibrium. We elucidate our general result with the help of a quantum dot capacitively coupled to a quantum Hall conductor and discuss the asymmetry dependence on the environment bias and induced dephasing.
We propose a scheme for dynamically creating orbitally entangled electron-hole pairs through a time-dependent variation of the electrical potential in a mesoscopic conductor. The time-dependent potential generates a superposition of electron-hole pairs in two different orbital regions of the conductor, a Mach-Zehnder interferometer in the quantum Hall regime. The orbital entanglement is detected via violation of a Bell inequality, formulated in terms of zero-frequency current noise. Adiabatic cycling of the potential, both in the weak and strong amplitude limit, is considered.
Shot noise in diffusive mesoscopic conductors, at finite observation frequencies $ω$ (comparable to the reciprocal Thouless time $τ_T^{-1}$), is analyzed with an account of screening. At low frequencies, the well-known result $S_I(ω)=2eI/3$ is recovered. This result is valid at arbitrary $ωτ_T$ for wide conductors longer than the screening length. However, at least for two very different systems, namely, wide and short conductors, and thin conductors over a close ground plane, noise approaches a different fundamental level, $S_I(ω) = eI$, at $ωτ_T\gg 1$.
It is shown that the nonequilibrium steady-state of a phase-coherent conductor can be described by a generalized thermodynamic potential based on the concept of partial densities of states. This is possible due to the fact that dissipation takes place only in the contacts for the emitted carriers. Long-range Coulomb interaction is included, and charge conservation and gauge invariance are satisfied. The theory is illustrated for a mesoscopic capacitor with leakage.
New experiments that measure the low-frequency shot-noise spectrum at local tunneling contacts on mesoscopic structures are proposed. The current fluctuation spectrum at a single tunneling tip is determined by local partial densities of states. The current-correlation spectrum between two tunneling tips is sensitive to non-diagonal density of states elements which are expressed in terms of products of scattering states of the conductor. Thus such an experiment permits to investigate correlations of electronic wave functions. We present specific results for a clean wire with a single barrier an…
We propose a measurement set-up for detecting quantum noise over a wide frequency range using inelastic transitions in a tunable two-level system as a detector. The frequency-resolving detector consists of a double quantum dot which is capacitively coupled to the leads of a nearby mesoscopic conductor. The inelastic current through the double quantum dot is calculated in response to equilibrium and non-equilibrium current fluctuations in the nearby conductor, including vacuum fluctuations at very low temperatures. As a specific example, the fluctuations across a quantum point contact are discu…
We consider two quantum coherent conductors interacting weakly via long range Coulomb forces. We describe the interaction in terms of two-particle collisions described by a two-particle scattering matrix. As an example we determine the transmission probability and correlations in a two-particle scattering experiment and find that the results can be expressed in terms of the density-of-states matrices of the non-interacting scatterers.
We derive Bardeen-like expressions for the transmission probabilities between two multi-probe mesoscopic conductors coupled by a weak tunneling contact. We emphasize especially the dual role of a weak coupling contact as a current source and sink and analyze the magnetic field symmetry. In the limit of a point-like tunneling contact the transmission probability becomes a product of local, partial density of states of the two mesoscopic conductors. We present expressions for the partial density of states in terms of functional derivatives of the scattering matrix with respect to the local poten…
The low frequency quantum transport properties of a three-probe mesoscopic conductor are studied using Büttiker's AC transport formalism. The static transmission coefficients and emittance matrix of the system were computed by explicitly evaluating the various partial density of states (PDOS). We have investigated the finite size effect of the scattering volume on the global PDOS. By increasing the scattering volume we observed a gradual improvement in the agreement of the total DOS as computed externally or locally. Our numerical data permits a particular fitting form of the finite size effec…
We have investigated the weakly non-linear quantum transport properties of a two-dimensional quantum conductor. We have developed a numerical scheme which is very general for this purpose. The nonlinear conductance is computed by explicitly evaluating the various partial density of states, the sensitivity and the characteristic potential. Interesting spatial structure of these quantities are revealed. We present detailed results concerning the crossover behavior of the second order nonlinear conductance when the conductor changes from geometrically symmetrical to asymmetrical. Other issues of …
We investigate nonlinear heat properties in mesoscopic conductors using a scattering theory of transport. Our approach is based on a leading-order expansion in both the electrical and thermal driving forces. Beyond linear response, the transport coefficients are functions of the nonequilibrium screening potential that builds up in the system due to interactions. Within a mean-field approximation, we self-consistently calculate the heat rectification properties of a quantum dot attached to two terminals. We discuss nonlinear contributions to the Peltier effect and find departures from the Wiede…
We extend the analysis of the effects of electromagnetic (EM) fields on mesoscopic conductors to include the effects of field quantization, motivated by recent experiments on circuit QED. We show that in general there is a photovoltaic (PV) current induced by quantized cavity modes at zero bias across the conductor. This current depends on the average photon occupation number and vanishes identically when it is equal to the average number of thermal electron-hole pairs. We analyze in detail the case of a chaotic quantum dot at temperature T_e in contact with a thermal EM field at temperature T…
We present a new formulation to calculate the electric conductance of mesoscopic conductors by utilizing the singular value decomposition, which is a mathematical technique to manipulate matrices. Our formulation is useful in treating conductors with rather complicated atomic structures, for which naive recursion formula is cumbersome. It also has an advantage in scaling up the calculation by using parallel computation, which potentially allows us the real-scale calculations at the atomic level. On the other hands, the effects of electron-electron interactions are hard to be treated within thi…
We introduce a hierarchy of density of states to characterize the charge distribution in a mesoscopic conductor. At the bottom of this hierarchy are the partial density of states which represent the contribution to the local density of states if both the incident and the out-going scattering channel is prescribed. The partial density of states play a prominent role in measurements with a scanning tunneling microscope on multiprobe conductors in the presence of current flow. The partial density of states determine the degree of dephasing generated by a weakly coupled voltage probe. In addition …
A method to calculate the statistics of energy exchange between quantum systems is presented. The generating function of this statistics is expressed through a Keldysh path integral. The method is first applied to the problem of heat dissipation from a biased mesoscopic conductor into the adjacent reservoirs. We then consider energy dissipation in an electrical circuit around a mesoscopic conductor. We derive the conditions under which measurements of the fluctuations of heat dissipation can be used to investigate higher order cumulants of the charge counting statistics of a mesoscopic conduct…
We discuss a consequence of time reversal symmetry on thermoelectric effect in nonequilibrium coherent quantum transport. Starting with a quantum version of the fluctuation theorem, we show that there exist universal relations between the Peltier coefficient and the Seebeck coefficient of general mesoscopic systems with Coulomb interaction in a nonlinear regime. This extended Kelvin-Onsager relation may be used to obtain useful information on heat current, e.g. the nonlinear Peltier coefficient, which is difficult to be measured in a usual setup of experiments, only from electric current measu…
We present a quantum calculation based on scattering theory of the frequency dependent noise of current in an interacting chaotic cavity. We include interactions of the electron system via long range Coulomb forces between the conductor and a gate with capacitance $C$. We obtain explicit results exhibiting the two time scales of the problem, the cavity's dwell time $τ_D$ and the $RC$-time $τ_C$ of the cavity {\em vis à vis} the gate. The noise shows peculiarities at frequencies of the order and exceeding the inverse charge relaxation time $τ^{-1} = τ^{-1}_D+τ^{-1}_C $.
The development of single-electron sources has paved the way for a novel type of experiments in which individual electrons are emitted into a quantum-coherent circuit. In one approach, single-electron excitations are generated by applying Lorentzian-shaped voltage pulses to a contact. Here, we propose to use such voltage pulses for electronic spectroscopy of mesoscopic devices. Specifically, we show how characteristic timescales of a quantum-coherent conductor can be extracted from the distribution of waiting times between charge pulses propagating through a mesoscopic circuit. To illustrate o…
We calculate the third cumulant of current in a chaotic cavity with contacts of arbitrary transparency as a function of frequency. Its frequency dependence drastically differs from that of the conventional noise. In addition to a dispersion at the inverse RC time characteristic of charge relaxation, it has a low-frequency dispersion at the inverse dwell time of electrons in the cavity. This effect is suppressed if both contacts have either large or small transparencies.
We study current fluctuations in a phase coherent Y-shaped conductor connected to external leads and voltage probes. The voltage probes are taken to have finite impedances and thus can cause voltage fluctuations in the circuit. Applying the Keldysh formulation and a saddle point approximation appropriate for slow fluctuations, we examine at zero temperature the feedback effects on the current fluctuations due to the fluctuating voltages. We consider mesoscopic Y-shaped conductors made of tunnel junctions and of diffusive wires. Unlike two-terminal conductors, we find that for the Y-shaped cond…
We study the effect of mesoscopic fluctuations on the validity of the Wiedemann--Franz (WF) law for quasi-one-dimensional metal wires and open quantum dots. At temperatures much less than the generalized Thouless energy, E_c, the WF law is satisfied for each specific sample but as the temperature is raised through E_c a sample-specific correction to the WF law of order 1/g appears (g is the dimensionless conductance) and then tends to zero again at high temperatures. The mesoscopic violation of the Weidemann-Franz law is even more pronounced in a ring geometry, for which Lorenz number exhibits…
In this paper, we present a method to investigate the spin-current shot noise in mesoscopic conductors, by using scattering matrix theory and Green's function technique. We first derive a general expression for the spin-current noise at zero-frequency limit, and extract the shot-noise component by discussing it at zero-temperature limit. The expression indicates that the spin-current shot noise in one lead is caused by the transmissions to the spin-resolved states in this lead and the interferences of these transmissions. As an application, we simulate the spin-current shot noise in a spin tra…
In this article, we have discussed about the scattering of charge and spin in spin-resolved mesoscopic systems. We have proposed a method to generate and detect the entanglement of electronic spin and electronic orbital degrees of freedom. It is observed that in a spin-resolved mesoscopic system, all form of entanglement existing between different electronic degrees of freedom can be generated. A method to detect Bell's inequality violation in terms of zero frequency current cross-correlators has been mentioned. Further, we have also studied the effect of quantum interference between spin flip…
We analyze the effect of decoherence on the violation of the Clauser-Horne (CH) inequality for the full electron counting statistics in a mesoscopic multiterminal conductor. Our setup consists of an entangler that emits a flux of entangled electrons into two conductors characterized by a scattering matrix and subject to decoherence. Loss of phase memory is modeled phenomenologically by introducing fictitious extra leads. The outgoing electrons are detected using spin-sensitive electron counters. Given a certain average number of incoming entangled electrons, the CH inequality is evaluated as a…
We study the charge dynamics of a quantum dot as measured by a nearby quantum point contact probing the dot via individual single-particle wave packets. We contrast the two limiting cases of weak and strong system--detector coupling exerting vanishing and strong back-action on the system and analyze the resulting differences in the charge-charge correlator. Extending the study to multiple projective measurements modelling a continuous strong measurement, we identify a transition from a charge dynamics dominated by the system's properties to a universal dynamics governed by the measurement.
It is shown that measurements of zero-frequency shot-noise can provide information on electron-electron interaction, because the strong interaction results in the nonlinear voltage dependence of the shot noise in metallic wires. This is due to the fact that the Wiedemann-Franz law is no longer valid in the case of considerable electron-electron interaction. The deviations from this law increase the noise power and make it dependent strongly on the ratio of electron-electron and electron-impurity scattering rates.
We consider a two-level system coupled to a mesoscopic two-terminal conductor that acts as measuring device. As a convenient description of the conductor we introduce its scattering matrix. We show how its elements can be used to calculate the relaxation and decoherence rates of the two-level system. Special emphasis is laid on the charge screening in the conductor that becomes important in the many-channel limit. Finally we give some examples that illustrate charge screening in different limits.
We investigate basic properties of the thermopower (Seebeck coefficient) of phase-coherent conductors under the influence of dephasing and inelastic processes. Transport across the system is caused by a voltage bias or a thermal gradient applied between two terminals. Inelastic scattering is modeled with the aid of an additional probe acting as an ideal potentiometer and thermometer. We find that inelastic scattering reduces the conductor's thermopower and, more unexpectedly, generates a magnetic-field asymmetry in the Seebeck coefficient. The latter effect is shown to be a higher-order effect…
In the hot electron regime, electron-electron scattering strongly modifies not only the shot noise but also the full counting statistics. We employ a method based on a stochastic path integral to calculate the counting statistics of two systems in which noise in the hot electron regime has been experimentally measured. We give an analytical expression for the counting statistics of a chaotic cavity and find that heating due to electron-electron scattering renders the distribution of transmitted charge symmetric in the shot noise limit. We also discuss the frequency dispersion of the third orde…
The energy-dependent Andreev reflection eigenvalues determine the transport properties of normal-superconducting systems. We evaluate the eigenvalue density to get an insight into formation of resonant electron-hole transport channels. The circuit-theory-like method developed can be applied to any generic mesoscopic conductor or combinations thereof. We present the results for experimentally relevant cases of a diffusive wire and a double tunnel junction.
A theory of non-equilibrium (``shot'') noise and high frequency conductance in diffusive mesoscopic conductors with screening is presented. Detailed results are obtained for two simple geometries, for both large and short electron-electron scattering length $l_{ee}$, at frequencies of the order of the inverse Thouless time $1/τ_T$. The conductance and the noise are found to exhibit significant frequency dependence. For $L \ll l_{ee}$, the high-frequency ($ωτ_T \gg 1$) shot noise spectral density $S_I(ω)$ approaches a finite value between $2eI/3$ and $2eI$, depending on the screening properties…
We consider the possibility to employ a quantum wire realized in a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) as a spin ratchet. We show that a net spin current without accompanying net charge transport can be induced in the nonlinear regime by an unbiased external driving via an ac voltage applied between the contacts at the ends of the quantum wire. To achieve this we make use of the coupling of the electron spin to inhomogenous magnetic fields created by ferromagnetic stripes patterned on the semiconductor heterostructure that harbours the 2DEG. Using recursive Green function techniques we numeric…
This is a review of the phase coherent transmission through interacting mesoscopic conductors. As a paradigm we study the transmission amplitude and the dephasing rate for electron transport through a quantum dot in the Coulomb blockade regime. We summarize experimental and theoretical work devoted to the phase of the transmission amplitude. It is shown that the evolution of the transmission phase may be dominated by non-universal features in the short-time dynamics of the quantum dot. The controlled dephasing in Coulomb coupled conductors is investigated. Examples comprise a single or multipl…
It is shown that the dephasing rate in Coulomb coupled mesoscopic structures is determined by charge relaxation resistances. The charge relaxation resistance together with the capacitance determines the RC-time of the mesoscopic structure and at small frequencies determines the voltage fluctuation spectrum. Self-consistent expressions are presented which give the charge relaxation resistance and consequently the dephasing rate in terms of the diagonal and off-diagonal elements of a generalized Wigner-Smith delay-time matrix. Dephasing rates are discussed both for the equilibrium state and in t…
We propose a spin-independent scheme to generate and detect two-particle entanglement in a mesoscopic normal-superconductor system. A superconductor, weakly coupled to the normal conductor, generates an orbitally entangled state by injecting pairs of electrons into different leads of the normal conductor. The entanglement is detected via violation of a Bell inequality, formulated in terms of zero-frequency current cross-correlators. It is shown that the Bell inequality can be violated for arbitrary strong dephasing in the normal conductor.
Electron transport in mesoscopic conductors has traditionally involved investigations of the mean current and the fluctuations of the current. A complementary view on charge transport is provided by the distribution of waiting times between charge carriers, but a proper theoretical framework for coherent electronic systems has so far been lacking. Here we develop a quantum theory of electron waiting times in mesoscopic conductors expressed by a compact determinant formula. We illustrate our methodology by calculating the waiting time distribution for a quantum point contact and find a cross-ov…
We consider the transport of electrons passing through a mesoscopic device possessing internal dynamical quantum degrees of freedom. The mutual interaction between the system and the conduction electrons contributes to the current fluctuations, which we describe in terms of full counting statistics. We identify conditions where this discriminates coherent from incoherent internal dynamics, and also identify and illustrate conditions under which the device acts to dynamically bunch transmitted or reflected electrons, thereby generating super-Poissonian noise.
We present a model for electron injection from thermal reservoirs which is applied to particle simulations of one-dimensional mesoscopic conductors. The statistics of injected carriers is correctly described from nondegenerate to completely degenerate conditions. The model is validated by comparing Monte Carlo simulations with existing analytical results for the case of ballistic conductors. An excellent agreement is found for average and noise characteristics, in particular, the fundamental unities of electrical and thermal conductances are exactly reproduced.
A brief overview is presented of recent work which investigates the time-dependent relaxation of charge and its spontaneous fluctuations on mesoscopic conductors in the proximity of gates. The leading terms of the low frequency conductance are determined by a capacitive or inductive emittance and a dissipative charge relaxation resistance. The charge relaxation resistance is determined by the ratio of the mean square dwell time of the carriers in the conductor and the square of the mean dwell time. The contribution of each scattering channel is proportional to half a resistance quantum. We dis…
We calculate the low-frequency current noise for AC biased mesoscopic chaotic cavities and diffusive wires. Contrary to what happens for the admittance, the frequency dispersion is not dominated by the electric response time (the "RC" time of the circuit), but by the time that electrons need to diffuse through the structure (dwell time or diffusion time). Frequency dispersion of noise stems from fluctuations of the Fermi distribution function that preserve charge neutrality. Our predictions can be verified with present experimental technology.
We show that current correlations at the exit ports of a beam splitter can be used to detect electronic entanglement for a fairly general input state. This includes the situation where electron pairs can enter the beam splitter from the same port or be separated due to backscattering. The proposed scheme allows to discriminate between occupation-number and degree-of-freedom entanglement.
We present electrical transport experiments performed on submicron hybrid devices made of a ferromagnetic conductor (Co) and a superconducting (Al) electrode. The sample was patterned in order to separate the contributions of the Co conductor and of the Co-Al interface. We observed a strong influence of the Al electrode superconductivity on the resistance of the Co conductor. This effect is large only when the interface is highly transparent. We characterized the dependence of the observed resistance decrease on temperature, bias current and magnetic field. As the differential resistance of th…
The well-known Landauer-Buttiker (LB) picture used to explain the quantum Hall effect uses the concept of (chiral) edge states that carry the current. In their seminal 1992 article, Chklovskii, Shklovskii and Glazman (CSG) showed that the LB picture does not account for some very basic properties of the gas, such as its density profile, as it lacks a proper treatment of the electrostatic energy. They showed that, instead, one should consider alternated stripes of compressible and incompressible phases. In this letter, we revisit this issue using a full solution of the quantum-electrostatic pro…
A short summary of the drift-diffusion-Langevin formalism for calculating finite-frequency shot noise in diffusive conductors is presented. Two new results are included in this presentation. First, we arrive at a simple (but accurate) phenomenological expression for the semiclassical distribution function of electrons in the presence of electron-electron scattering. Second, it is shown that in thin samples, low-frequency shot noise may be large even if the sample length is much larger than the electron-phonon relaxation length.
In the white-noise limit current correlations measured at different contacts of a mesoscopic conductor are negative due to the antisymmetry of the wave function (Pauli principle). We show that current fluctuations at capacitive contacts induced via the long range Coulomb interaction as consequence of charge fluctuations in the mesoscopic sample can be {\it positively} correlated. The positive correlations are a consequence of the extension of the wave-functions into areas near both contacts. As an example we investigate in detail a quantum point contact in a high magnetic field under condition…
We formulate a general path integral approach which describes statistics of current fluctuations in mesoscopic coherent conductors at arbitrary frequencies and in the presence of interactions. Applying this approach to the non-interacting case, we analyze the frequency dispersion of the third cumulant of the current operator ${\cal S}_3$ at frequencies well below both the inverse charge relaxation time and the inverse electron dwell time. This dispersion turns out to be important in the frequency range comparable to applied voltages. For comparatively transparent conductors it may lead to the …
We investigate departures of the Onsager relations in the nonlinear regime of electronic transport through mesoscopic systems. We show that the nonlinear current--voltage characteristic is not an even function of the magnetic field due only to the magnetic-field dependence of the screening potential within the conductor. We illustrate this result for two types of conductors: A quantum Hall bar with an antidot and a chaotic cavity connected to quantum point contacts. For the chaotic cavity we obtain through random matrix theory an asymmetry in the fluctuations of the nonlinear conductance that …
We illustrate how classical chaotic dynamics influences the quantum properties at mesoscopic scales. As a model case we study semiclassically coherent transport through ballistic mesoscopic systems within the Landauer formalism beyond the so-called diagonal approximation, i.e. by incorporating classical action correlations. In this context we review and explain the two main trajectory-based methods developed for calculating quantum corrections: the configuration space approach and the phase space approach that can be regarded as less illustrative but more general than the first one.
We develop a scattering theory of current-induced forces exerted by the conduction electrons of a general mesoscopic conductor on slow "mechanical" degrees of freedom. Our theory describes the current-induced forces both in and out of equilibrium in terms of the scattering matrix of the phase-coherent conductor. Under general nonequilibrium conditions, the resulting mechanical Langevin dynamics is subject to both non-conservative and velocity-dependent Lorentz-like forces, in addition to (possibly negative) friction. We illustrate our results with a two-mode model inspired by hydrogen molecule…
We determine charge transfer statistics in a quantum conductor driven by a time-dependent voltage and identify the elementary transport processes. At zero temperature unidirectional and bidirectional single charge transfers occur. The unidirectional processes involve electrons injected from the source terminal due to excess dc bias voltage. The bidirectional processes involve electron-hole pairs created by time-dependent voltage bias. This interpretation is further supported by the charge transfer statistics in a multiterminal beam splitter geometry in which injected electrons and holes can be…
We introduce a general procedure to extract the wave function of quasiparticles in AC-driven quantum conductors. By incorporating the Bloch-Messiah reduction into the scattering theory approach to quantum transport, we construct the many-body state from the scattering matrix, within which the wave function of quasiparticles can be extracted. We find that two kinds of quasiparticles can be excited, while both of them are superpositions of particle and hole states in the Fermi sea. Due to the electron number conservation, the quasiparticles are always created in pairs, resulting in particle-hole…
The nonlinear I-V characteristics of mesoscopic samples contain parts which are linear in the magnetic field and quadratic in the electric field. These contributions to the current are entirely due to the electron-electron interaction and consequently they are proportional to the electron-electron interaction constant. We present detailed calculations of the magnitude of the effect as a function of the temperature, and the direction of the magnetic field. We show that in the case of a magnetic field oriented parallel to the sample, the effect exists entirely due to spin-orbit scattering. The t…
The distribution of electron waiting times is useful to characterize quantum transport in mesoscopic structures. Here we consider a generic quantum-coherent conductor consisting of a mesoscopic scatterer in a two-terminal setup. We extend earlier results for single-channel conductors to setups with several (possibly spin-degenerate) conduction channels and we discuss the effect of a finite electronic temperature. We present detailed investigations of the electron waiting times in a quantum point contact as well as in two mesoscopic interferometers with energy-dependent transmissions: a Fabry-P…
The electron waiting time is the time that passes between two subsequent charge transfers in an electronic conductor. Recently, theories of electron waiting times have been devised for quantum transport in Coulomb-blockade structures and for mesoscopic conductors, however, so far a proper description of a detector has been missing. Here we develop a quantum theory of a waiting time clock capable of measuring the distribution of waiting times between electrons above the Fermi sea in a mesoscopic conductor. The detector consists of a mesoscopic capacitor coupled to a quantum two-level system who…
The Landauer-Büttiker formalism provides a simple and insightful way for investigating many phenomena in mesoscopic physics. By this approach we derive general formulas for the energy properties and apply them to the basic setups. Of particular interest are the noise properties. We show that energy current fluctuations can be induced by zero-point fluctuations and we discuss the implications of this result.
Mesoscopic conductance fluctuations are a ubiquitous signature of phase-coherent transport in small conductors, exhibiting universal character independent of system details. In this work, however, we demonstrate a pronounced breakdown of this universality, due to the interplay of local and remote phenomena in transport. Our experiments are performed in a graphene-based interaction-detection geometry, in which an artificial magnetic texture is induced in the graphene layer by covering a portion of it with a micromagnet. When probing conduction at some distance from this region, the strong influ…
