We measure the temperature of a mesoscopic system consisting of an ultra-dilute two dimensional electron gas at the $Si/SiO_2$ interface in a metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) quantum dot by means of the capture and emission of an electron in a point defect close to the interface. Contrarily to previous reports, we show that the capture and emission by point defects in Si n-MOSFETs can be temperature dependent down to 800 mK. As the finite quantum grand canonical ensemble model applies, the time domain charge fluctuation in the defect is used to determine the temperature of the few electron gas in the channel.
These are the lecture notes for quantum and statistical mechanics courses that are given by DC at Ben-Gurion University. They are complementary to "Lecture Notes in Quantum Mechanics" [arXiv: quant-ph/0605180]. Some additional topics are covered, including: introduction to master equations; non-equilibrium processes; fluctuation theorems; linear response theory; adiabatic transport; the Kubo formalism; and the scattering approach to mesoscopics.
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…
Mesoscopic systems -- small electric circuits working in quantum regime -- offer us a unique experimental stage to explorer quantum transport in a tunable and precise way. The purpose of this Review is to show how they can contribute to statistical physics. We introduce the significance of fluctuation, or equivalently noise, as noise measurement enables us to address the fundamental aspects of a physical system. The significance of the fluctuation theorem (FT) in statistical physics is noted. We explain what information can be deduced from the current noise measurement in mesoscopic systems. A…
Thermodynamic uncertainty relations unveil useful connections between fluctuations in thermal systems and entropy production. This work extends these ideas to the disparate field of \textit{zero temperature} quantum mesoscopic physics where fluctuations are due to coherent effects and entropy production is replaced by a cost function. The cost function arises naturally as a bound on fluctuations, induced by coherent effects -- a critical resource in quantum mesoscopic physics. Identifying the cost function as an important quantity demonstrates the potential of importing powerful methods from n…
Entropy Production in Mesoscopic Electronic Transport Beyond Weak-Coupling
Instituto de Física Teórica, Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP)（圣保罗州立大学理论物理研究所）；Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro（里约热内卢联邦大学物理研究所）；Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Regensburg（雷根斯堡大学理论物理研究所）
Fluctuations are significant in mesoscopic systems and of particular importance in understanding quantum transport. Here, we show that fluctuations can be considered as a resource for the operations of open quantum systems as functional devices. We derive the statistics of the thermal transistor amplification factor and the cooling-by-heating refrigerator efficiency under the Gaussian fluctuation framework. Statistical properties of the stochastic thermal transistor and the cooling-by-heating efficiency are revealed in the linear-response regime. We clarify the unique role of inelastic process…
The entropy of an electronic system offers important insights into the nature of its quantum mechanical ground state. This is particularly valuable in cases where the state is difficult to identify by conventional experimental probes, such as conductance. Traditionally, entropy measurements are based on bulk properties, such as heat capacity, that are easily observed in macroscopic samples but are unmeasurably small in systems that consist of only a few particles. In this work, we develop a mesoscopic circuit to directly measure the entropy of just a few electrons, and demonstrate its efficacy…
