We present a new scheme to detect the quantum shot noise in coupled mesoscopic systems. By applying the noise thermometry to the capacitively coupled quantum point contacts (QPCs) we prove that the noise temperature of one QPC is in perfect proportion to that of the other QPC which is driven to non-equilibrium to generate quantum shot noise. We also found an unexpected effect that the noise in the source QPC is remarkably suppressed possibly due to the cooling effect by the detector QPC.
The frequency-dependent shot noise in long and narrow mesoscopic diffusive contacts is numerically calculated. The case of arbitrarily strong electron-electron scattering and zero temperature of electrodes is considered. For all voltages, the noise increases with frequency and tends to finite values. These limiting values are larger than the Poissonian noise and increase nearly as voltage to power 4/3. This allows one to experimentally determine the parameters of electron-electron interaction.
We present a numerical investigation of shot noise suppression in mesoscopic cavities and an intuitive semiclassical explanation of the behavior observed in the presence of an orthogonal magnetic field. In particular, we conclude that the decrease of shot noise for increasing magnetic field is the result of the interplay between the diameter of classical cyclotron orbits and the width of the apertures defining the cavity. Good agreement with published experimental results is obtained, without the need of introducing fitting parameters.
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…
It is shown that the spin resolved current shot noise can probe attractive or repulsive interactions in mesoscopic systems. This is illustrated in two physical situations : i) a normal-superconducting junction where the spin current noise is found to be zero, and ii) a single electron transistor (SET), where the spin current noise is found to be Poissonian. Repulsive interactions may also lead to weak attractive correlations (bunching of opposite spins) in conditions far from equilibrium. Spin current shot noise can be used to measure the spin relaxation time $T_1$, and a set-up is proposed in…
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 study sequential tunneling through a metallic nanoparticle close to the Stoner instability coupled to parallely magnetized electrodes. Increasing the bias voltage successively opens transport channels associated with excitations of the nanoparticle's total spin. For the current this leads just to a steplike increase. The Fano factor, in contrast, shows oscillations between large super-Poissonian and sub-Poissonian values as a function of bias voltage. We explain the enhanced Fano factor in terms of generalized random-telegraph noise and propose the shot noise as a convenient tool to probe t…
The frequency dependence of shot noise in mesoscopic diffusive contacts is calculated with account taken of long-range Coulomb interaction and external screening. While the low-frequency noise is 1/3 of noise of classical Poisson process independently of the contact shape, the high-frequency noise tends to the full classical value for long and narrow contacts because of strong screening by the surrounding medium. In this case, the current fluctuations at opposite ends of the contact are completely independent.
We discuss theoretically a setup where a time-dependent current consisting of a DC bias and two sinusoidal harmonics is driven through a sample. If the sample exhibits current-dependent shot noise, the down-converted noise power spectrum varies depending on the local-oscillator phase of the mixer. The theory of this phase-dependent noise is applied to discuss the measurement of the radio-frequency single-electron transistor. We also show that this effect can be used to measure the shot noise accurately even in nonlinear high-impedance samples.
We investigate the shot noise generated by particle emission from a mesoscopic capacitor into an edge state reflected and transmitted at a quantum point contact (QPC). For a capacitor subject to a periodic voltage the resulting shot noise is proportional to the number of particles (both electrons and holes) emitted during a period. It is proportional to the product of transmission and reflection probability of the QPC independent of the applied voltage but proportional to the driving frequency. If two driven capacitors are coupled to a QPC at different sides then the resulting shot noise is ma…
The general scattering-matrix formalism is suggested for the description of shot noise in single-channel quantum NS contacts in the presence of smeared Andreev levels in the $eV<Δ$ regime. It is shown that the noise spectral density as a function of frequency shows a number of characteristic features due to the presence of the Andreev resonances in the system. It turns out that, by analyzing these singularities, one can determine the relative phases of the Andreev reflection amplitudes corresponding to the neighboring resonances.
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.
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 $ωτ_T\gg 1$.
We discuss the possibility of diffusive conduction and thus of suppression of shot noise by a factor 1/3 in mesoscopic semiconductor devices with two-dimensional and one-dimensional potential disorder, for which existing experimental results do not provide a conclusive result. On the basis of our numerical analysis, we conclude that it is quite difficult to achieve diffusive transport over a reasonably wide parameter range, unless the device dimensions are increased up to the macroscopic scale. In addition, in the case of one-dimensional disorder, some mechanism capable of mode-mixing has to b…
Injection of unpolarized charge current through the longitudinal leads of a four-terminal two-dimensional electron gas with the Rashba spin-orbit (SO) coupling and/or SO scattering off extrinsic impurities is responsible not only for the pure spin Hall current in the transverse leads, but also for random time-dependent current fluctuations. We employ the scattering approach to current-current correlations in multiterminal nanoscale conductors to analyze the shot noise of transverse pure spin Hall and zero charge current, or transverse spin current and non-zero charge Hall current, driven by un…
This is a review of shot noise, the time-dependent fluctuations in the electrical current due to the discreteness of the electron charge, in small conductors. The shot-noise power can be smaller than that of a Poisson process as a result of correlations in the electron transmission imposed by the Pauli principle. This suppression takes on simple universal values in a symmetric double-barrier junction (suppression factor 1/2), a disordered metal (factor 1/3), and a chaotic cavity (factor 1/4). Loss of phase coherence has no effect on this shot-noise suppression, while thermalization of the elec…
We study differential shot noise in mesoscopic diffusive normal-superconducting (NS) heterostructures at finite voltages where nonlinear effects due to the superconducting proximity effect arise. A numerical scattering-matrix approach is adopted. Through an NS contact, we observe that the shot noise shows a reentrant dependence on voltage due to the superconducting proximity effect but the differential Fano factor stays approximately constant. Furthermore, we consider differential shot noise in the structures where an insulating barrier is formed between normal and superconducting regions and …
In the presence of shot noise the charge on a mesoscopic conductor fluctuates. We are interested in the charge fluctuations which arise if the conductor is in the proximity of a gate to which it is coupled by long range Coulomb forces only. Specifically we consider a gate coupled to the edge of a Hall bar subject to a quantizing magnetic field which contains a quantum point contact. The gate is located away from the quantum point contact. We evaluate the charge relaxation resistance for this geometry. The charge relaxation resistance determines the current fluctuations and potential fluctuatio…
Using the 'drift-diffusion-Langevin' equation, we have recently shown that finite-frequency shot noise in diffusive mesoscopic conductors is very sensitive to the ratio $γ\equiv L/\lee$ between the sample length $L$ and the electron-electron mean free path $\lee$. In this work we present numerical calculations of the noise at arbitrary value of $γ$. If coupled with accurate noise measurements, the results presented here could serve as a new and independent way of determining $\lee$ in a given sample.
The spin resolved current shot noise can uniquely probe the interactions in mesoscopic systems: i) in a normal-superconducting junction, the spin current noise is zero, as carried by singlets, and ii) in a single electron transistor (SET) in the sequential regime, the spin current noise is Poissonian. Coulomb interactions lead to usually repulsive, but also attractive correlations. Spin current shot noise can also be used to measure the spin relaxation time $T_1$.
Current noise is measured with a SQUID in low impedance and transparent Nb-Al-Nb j unctions of length comparable to the phase breaking length and much longer than the thermal length. The shot noise amplitude is compared with theoretical predictions of doubled shot noise in diffusive normal/superconductor (NS) junctions due to the Andreev reflections. We discuss the heat dissipation away from the normal part through the NS interfaces. A weak applied magnetic field reduces the amplitude of the 1/f noise by a factor of two, showing that even far from equilibrium the sample is in the mesoscopic re…
We examine critically the idea that fractional charges may carry electrical current in a conductor, much as do the normal electrons in a metallic Fermi liquid. We explore a range of issues that have gained the status of indispensability for analyzing conductance and shot noise in fractionally charged systems. For these fundamental transport problems, however, a truly microscopic understanding is not yet in sight.
We study shot noise in mesoscopic diffusive wires between a normal and a superconducting terminal. We particularly focus on the regime, in which the proximity-induced reentrance effect is important. We will examine the difference between a simple Boltzmann-Langevin description, which neglects induced correlations beyond the simple conductivity correction, and a full quantum calculation. In the latter approach, it turns out that two Andreev pairs propagating coherently into the normal metal are anti-correlated for E<E_c, where E_c=D/L^2 is the Thouless energy. In a fork geometry the flux-sensit…
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.
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.
We perform a numerical investigation of the effect of the disorder associated with randomly located impurities on shot noise in mesoscopic cavities. We show that such a disorder becomes dominant in determining the noise behavior when the amplitude of the potential fluctuations is comparable to the value of the Fermi energy and for a large enough density of impurities. In contrast to existing conjectures, random potential fluctuations are shown not to contribute to achieving the chaotic regime whose signature is a Fano factor of 1/4, but, rather, to the diffusive behavior typical of disordered …
We investigate the effects of dephasing on the current statistics of mesoscopic conductors with a recently developed statistical model, focusing in particular on mesoscopic cavities and Aharonov-Bohm rings. For such devices, we analyze the influence of an arbitrary degree of decoherence on the cumulants of the current. We recover known results for the limiting cases of fully coherent and totally incoherent transport and are able to obtain detailed information on the intermediate regime of partial coherence for a varying number of open channels. We show that dephasing affects the average curren…
We show that shot noise can be used for studies of hopping and resonant tunnelling between localised electron states. In hopping via several states, shot noise is seen to be suppressed compared with its classical Poisson value $S_I=2eI$ ($I$ is the average current) and the suppression depends on the distribution of the barriers between the localised states. In resonant tunnelling through a single impurity an enhancement of shot noise is observed. It has been established, both theoretically and experimentally, that a considerable increase of noise occurs due to Coulomb interaction between two r…
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…
Recently we have developed a theory of Keldysh formalism for mesoscopic systems. The resulting nonequilibrium Kubo formula for differential conductance makes it possible to propose the new formula of shot noise $S_h$, and thus to study shot noise in correlated systems at any temperature and any bias voltage. Employing this new approach, we analyze shot noise in the Kondo regime through a quantum dot for the symmetric case at zero temperature. Using the renormalized perturbation theory, we prove that in the leading order of bias voltage $S_h$ equal to noise power at zero temperature conventiona…
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.
Shot noise, originating from the discrete nature of electric charge, is generated by scattering processes. Shot-noise measurements have revealed microscopic charge dynamics in various quantum transport phenomena. In particular, beyond the single-particle picture, such measurements have proved to be powerful ways to investigate electron correlation in quantum liquids. Here, we review the recent progress of shot-noise measurements in mesoscopic physics. This review summarizes the basics of shot-noise theory based on the Landauer-Büttiker formalism, measurement techniques used in previous studies…
Electronic properties of mesoscopic systems made of normal metal in contact with normal and superconducting reservoirs are determined by Andreev Reflection. We address both experimentally and theoretically how Andreev Reflection manifests itself in shot noise experiments and what physics can be deduced from such measurements. We report high frequency measurements in which Andreev Reflection affects the distribution statistics of the electronic excitations, resulting in a shift of the classical-to-quantum regime or equilibrium-to-shot noise crossovers. We also demonstrate that the effective cha…
Theoretical and experimental work concerned with dynamic fluctuations has developed into a very active and fascinating subfield of mesoscopic physics. We present a review of this development focusing on shot noise in small electric conductors. Shot noise is a consequence of the quantization of charge. It can be used to obtain information on a system which is not available through conductance measurements. In particular, shot noise experiments can determine the charge and statistics of the quasiparticles relevant for transport, and reveal information on the potential profile and internal energy…
We study fluctuations of spin-polarized currents in a three-terminal spin-valve system consisting of a diffusive normal metal wire connected by tunnel junctions to three ferromagnetic terminals. Based on a spin-dependent Boltzmann-Langevin equation, we develop a semiclassical theory of charge and spin currents and the correlations of the currents fluctuations. In the three terminal system, we show that current fluctuations are strongly affected by the spin-flip scattering in the normal metal and the spin polarizations of the terminals, which may point in different directions. We analyze the de…
We investigate the current shot noise at a three terminal node in which one of the branches contains a noise generating source and the correlations are measured between the currents flowing through the other two branches. Interestingly, if the node is macroscopic, the current correlations are positive, whereas for a quantum coherent mesoscopic node anti-bunching of electrons leads to negative correlations. We present specific predictions which permit the experimental investigation of the crossover from quantum mechanical noise division to macroscopic noise noise division.
We experimentally investigated the current noise in diffusive Superconductor/Normal metal/Superconductor junctions with lengths between the superconducting coherence length xi_Delta and the phase coherence length L_Phi of the normal metal (xi_Delta < L < L_Phi). We measured the shot noise over a large range of energy covering both the regimes of coherent and incoherent multiple Andreev reflections. The transition between these two regimes occurs at the Thouless energy where a pronounced minimum in the current noise density is observed. Above the Thouless energy, in the regime of incoherent mul…
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…
In these notes we discuss the origin of shot noise ('Schroteffekt') of vacuum tubes in detail. It will be shown that shot noise observed in vacuum tubes and first described by W. Schottky in 1918 is a purely classical phenomenon. This is in pronounced contrast to shot noise investigated in mesoscopic conductors which is due to quantum mechanical diffraction of electron waves.
We present a simple phenomenological model which offers a unifying interpretation of the experimental observations on the 0.7 conductance anomaly of quantum point contacts. The model utilizes the Landauer-Buttiker formalism and involves enhanced spin correlations and thermal depopulation of spin subbands. In particular our model can account for the plateau value 0.7 and the unusual temperature and magnetic field dependence. Furthermore it predicts an anomalous suppression of shot noise at the 0.7 plateau.
We propose a two-terminal method to measure shot noise in mesoscopic systems based on an instability in the current-voltage characteristic of an on-chip detector. The microscopic noise drives the instability, which leads to random switching of the current between two values, the telegraph process. In the Gaussian regime, the shot noise power driving the instability may be extracted from the I-V curve, with the noise power as a fitting parameter. In the threshold regime, the extreme value statistics of the mesoscopic conductor can be extracted from the switching rates, which reorganize the comp…
Quantum pumping processes are accompanied by considerable quantum noise. We investigated the pumped shot noise (PSN) properties in adiabatically modulated graphene-based double-barrier structures. General expressions for adiabatically PSN in phase-coherent mesoscopic conductors are derived based on the scattering approach. It is found that comparing with the Poisson processes, the PSN is dramatically enhanced where the dc pumped current changes flow direction, which demonstrates the effect of the Klein paradox.
Photo-assisted transport through a mesoscopic conductor occurs when an oscillatory (AC) voltage is superposed to the constant (DC) bias which is imposed on this conductor. Of particular interest is the photo assisted shot noise, which has been investigated theoretically and experimentally for several types of samples. For DC biased conductors, a detection scheme for finite frequency noise using a dissipative resonant circuit, which is inductively coupled to the mesoscopic device, was developped recently. We argue that the detection of the finite frequency photo-assisted shot noise can be achie…
We have investigated the influence of shot noise on the IV-curves of a single mesoscopic Josephson junction. We observe a linear enhancement of zero-bias conductance of the Josephson junction with increasing shot noise power. Moreover, the IV-curves become increasingly asymmetric. Our analysis on the asymmetry shows that the Coulomb blockade of Cooper pairs is strongly influenced by the non-Gaussian character of the shot noise.
We argue, physically and formally, that existing diffusive models of noise yield inaccurate microscopic descriptions of nonequilibrium current fluctuations. The theoretical shortfall becomes pronounced in quantum-confined metallic systems, such as the two-dimensional electron gas. In such systems we propose a simple experimental test of mesoscopic validity for diffusive theory's central claim: the smooth crossover between Johnson-Nyquist and shot noise.
Reznikov et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 3340 (1995)) have presented definitive observations of nonequilibrium noise in a quantum point contact. Especially puzzling is the "anomalous" peak structure of the excess noise measured at constant current; to date it remains unexplained. We show that their experiment directly reveals the deep link between conservation principles in the electron gas and its low-dimensional, mesoscopic behavior. Key to that connection are gauge invariance and the compressibility sum rule. These are central not only to the experiment of Reznikov et al. but to the very natur…
In the theory of noise processes for mesoscopic conductors, the relationship between shot noise and hot-electron noise is absolutely fundamental to understanding the underlying microscopic fluctuations. From the vantage point of orthodox microscopics and kinetics, their relation is a long way from being settled. Its resolution calls for the tools of many-body theory. We motivate the many-body approach to noise, review the analysis of conductance and current noise within linear diffusive theories, and discuss the smooth crossover between thermal noise and shot noise. We outline a kinetic theory…
We analyse high-field current fluctuations in metallic systems by direct mapping of the Fermi-liquid correlations to the semiclassical nonequilibrium state. We give three applications. First, for bulk conductors, we show that there is a unique nonequilibrium analogue to the fluctuation-dissipation theorem for thermal noise. With it, we calculate suppression of the excess hot-electron term by Pauli exclusion. Second, in the degenerate regime, we argue that shot noise and thermal noise are incommensurate. They cannot be connected by a smooth, universal interpolation formula. This follows from th…
We study the non-equilibrium noise in mesoscopic diffusive wires hosting magnetic impurities. We find that the shot-noise to current ratio develops a peak at intermediate source-drain biases of the order of the Kondo temperature. The enhanced impurity contribution at intermediate biases is also manifested in the effective distribution. The predicted peak represents increased inelastic scattering rate at the non-equilibrium Kondo crossover.
This paper is devoted to study of the classical-to-quantum crossover of the shot noise value in chaotic systems. This crossover is determined by the ratio of the particle dwell time in the system, $τ_d$, to the characteristic time for diffraction $t_E \simeq λ^{-1} |\ln \hbar|$, where $λ$ is the Lyapunov exponent. The shot noise vanishes in the limit $t_E \gg τ_d $, while reaches its universal quantum value in the opposite limit. Thus, the Lyapunov exponent of chaotic mesoscopic systems may be found by the shot noise measurements.
We investigate the charge and heat electronic noise in a generic two-terminal mesoscopic conductor in the absence of the corresponding charge and heat currents. Despite these currents being zero, shot noise is generated in the system. We show that, irrespective of the conductor's details and the specific nonequilibrium conditions, the charge shot noise never exceeds its thermal counterpart, thus establishing a general bound. Such a bound does not exist in the case of heat noise, which reveals a fundamental difference between charge and heat transport under zero-current conditions.
We present a theoretical analysis of the effect of inelastic electron scattering on current and its fluctuations in a mesoscopic quantum dot (QD) connected to two leads, based on a recently developed nonperturbative technique involving the approximate mapping of the many-body electron-phonon coupling problem onto a multichannel single-electron scattering problem. In this, we apply the Büttiker scattering theory of shot noise for a two-terminal mesoscopic device to the multichannel case with differing weight factors and examine zero-frequency shot noise for two special cases: (i) a single-molec…
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 …
A semiclassical theory of the low frequency shot noise in ferromagnet - normal metal systems is formulated. Non-collinear magnetization directions of the ferromagnetic leads, arbitrary junctions and the elastic and inelastic scattering regimes are considered. The shot noise is governed by a set of mesoscopic parameters that are expressed in terms of the microscopic details of the junctions in the circuit. Explicit results in the case of ballistic, tunnel, and diffusive junctions are evaluated. The shot noise, the current and the Fano factor are calculated for a double barrier ferromagnet - nor…
The shot noise of spin polarized electrons is shown to be generically dependent upon spin-flip processes. Such a situation represents perhaps the simplest instance where the two-particle character of current fluctuations out of equilibrium is explicit, leading to trinomial statistics of charge transfer in a single channel model. We calculate the effect of spin-orbit coupling, magnetic impurities, and precession in an external magnetic field on the noise in the experimentally relevant cases of diffusive wires and lateral semiconductor dots, finding dramatic enhancements of the Fano factor. The …
We analyze the current-voltage characteristic of a quantum conduction channel coupled to an electromagnetic environment of arbitrary frequency-dependent impedance. In the weak blockade regime the correction to the ohmic behavior is directly related to the channel current fluctuations vanishing at perfect transmission in the same way as shot noise. This relation can be generalized to describe the environmental Coulomb blockade in a generic mesoscopic conductor coupled to an external impedance, as the response of the latter to the current fluctuations in the former.
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 have investigated how the Coulomb blockade of a mesoscopic Josephson junction in a high-impedance environment is suppressed by shot noise from an adjacent junction. The presented theoretical analysis is an extension of the phase correlation theory for the case of a non-Gaussian noise. Asymmetry of the non-Gaussian noise should result in the shift of the conductance minimum from zero voltage and the ratchet effect (nonzero current at zero voltage), which have been experimentally observed. The analysis demonstrates that a Coulomb blockaded tunnel junction in a high impedance environment can b…
Two electrons interacting at a mesoscopic beam splitter
Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt(德国联邦物理技术研究院);University of Latvia(拉脱维亚大学);Institut für Mathematische Physik, Technische Universität Braunschweig(布伦瑞克工业大学数学物理研究所)
There has been renewed interest in the physics of the so-called crossover for current fluctuations in mesoscopic conductors, most recently involving the possibility of its appearance in the passage to the macroscopic limit. Shot noise is normally absent from solid-state conductors in the large, and its anomalous resurgence there has been ascribed to a rich interplay of drift, diffusion, and Coulomb screening. We demonstrate that essentially the same rise in shot noise occurs in a much less complex system: the Boltzmann-Drude-Lorentz model of a macroscopic, uniform gas of strictly noninteractin…