The basic quantum mechanical relation between fluctuations of transported charge and current correlators is discussed. It is found that, as a rule, the correlators are to be time-ordered in an unusual way. Instances where the difference with the conventional ordering matters are illustrated by means of a simple scattering model. We apply the results to resolve a discrepancy concerning the third cumulant of charge transport across a quantum point contact.
We study the trace of the exponentials of general fermion bi-linears, including pairing terms, and including non Hermitian forms. In particular, we give elementary derivations for determinant and pfaffian formulae for such traces, and use these to obtain general expressions for the full counting statistics in states associated with quadratic Hamiltonians including BCS-like pairing terms and fermion parity in a prescribed region or set of modes. We also derive pfaffian expressions for state overlaps and counting statistics in states built out of the vacuum by creation of pairs of particles.
We revisit the problem of full counting statistics of particles on a segment of a one-dimensional gas of free fermions. Using a combination of analytical and numerical methods, we study the crossover between the counting of discrete particles and of the continuous particle density as a function of smoothing in the counting procedure. In the discrete-particle limit, the result is given by the Fisher--Hartwig expansion for Toeplitz determinants, while in the continuous limit we recover the bosonization results. This example of full counting statistics with smoothing is also related to orthogonal…
Full counting statistics of electron transport is a powerful diagnostic tool for probing the nature of quantum transport beyond what is obtainable from the average current or conductance measurement alone. In particular, the non-Markovian dynamics of quantum dot molecule plays an important role in the nonequilibrium electron tunneling processes. It is thus necessary to understand the non-Markovian full counting statistics in a quantum dot molecule. Here we study the non-Markovian full counting statistics in two typical quantum dot molecules, namely, serially coupled and side-coupled double qua…
We use the inchworm Quantum Monte Carlo method to investigate the full counting statistics of particle and energy currents in a strongly correlated quantum dot. Our method is used to extract the heat fluctuations and entropy production of a quantum thermoelectric device, as well as cumulants of the particle and energy currents. The energy--particle current cross correlations reveal information on the preparation of the system and the interplay of thermal and electric currents. We furthermore demonstrate the signature of a crossover from Coulomb blockade to Kondo physics in the energy current f…
Stochastic systems feature, in general, both coherent dynamics and incoherent transitions between different states. We propose a method to identify the coherent part in the full counting statistics for the transitions. The proposal is illustrated for electron transfer through a quantum-dot spin valve, which combines quantum-coherent spin precession with electron tunneling. We show that by counting the number of transferred electrons as a function of time, it is possible to distill out the coherent dynamics from the counting statistics even in transport regimes, in which other tools such as the…
We propose a procedure to reconstruct characteristic features of an unknown stochastic system from the long-time full counting statistics of some of the system's transitions that are monitored by a detector. The full counting statistics is conveniently parametrized by so-called generalized factorial cumulants. Taking only a few of them as input information is sufficient to reconstruct important features such as the lower bound of the system dimension and the full spectrum of relaxation rates. The use of generalized factorial cumulants reveals system dimensions and rates that are hidden for ord…
We propose a dynamical scheme for measuring the full counting statistics in a mesoscopic conductor using an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The conductor couples capacitively to one arm of the interferometer and causes a phase shift which is proportional to the number of transferred charges. Importantly, the full counting statistics can be obtained from average current measurements at the outputs of the interferometer. The counting field can be controlled by varying the time delay between two separate voltage signals applied to the conductor and the interferometer, respectively. As a s…
