We discuss the problem of full counting statistics for periodic pumping. The probability generating function is usually defined on a circle of the "physical" values of the counting parameter, with its periodicity corresponding to charge quantization. The extensive part of the generating function can either be an analytic function on this circle or have singularities. These two cases may be interpreted as different thermodynamic phases in time domain. We discuss several examples of phase transitions between these phases for classical and quantum systems. Finally, we prove a criterion for the "analytic" phase in the problem of a quantum pump for noninteracting fermions.
We calculate the charge transport in a flux biased dissipative Cooper pair pump using the method of full counting statistics (FCS). This is instead of a more traditional technique of integrating a very small expectation value of the instantaneous current over the pumping period. We show that the rotating wave approximation (RWA), which fails in the traditional technique, produces accurate results within the FCS method.
Electron counting statistics of a current pump in an open system has universal form in the weak pumping current regime. In the time domain, charge transmission is described by two uncorrelated Poisson processes, corresponding to electron transmission in the right and left direction. Overall noise is super-poissonian, and can be reduced to poissonian by tuning the amplitude and phase of driving signal so that current to noise ratio is maximized. Measuring noise in this regime provides a new method for determining charge quantum in an open system without any fitting parameters.
We consider quantum statistics of charge transmitted through a mesoscopic device in the adiabatic pumping process. A general formula for the distribution function of the transmitted charge in terms of the time-dependent S-matrix is obtained. It is applied to a few simple examples of the pumping cycles. We identify coherent pumping strategies which lead to the binomial charge distribution and minimize the fluctuations of the pumped current. Conditions for the ideal noiseless quantized pump are discussed.
We optimize the operation of single-electron charge pumps using full counting statistics techniques. To this end, we evaluate the statistics of pumped charge on a wide range of driving frequencies using Floquet theory, focusing here on the current and the noise. For charge pumps controlled by one or two gate voltages, we demonstrate that our theoretical framework may lead to enhanced device performance. Specifically, by optimizing the driving parameters, we predict a significant increase in the frequencies for which a quantized current can be produced. For adiabatic two-parameter pumps, we exp…
We develop a method to calculate electronic transport properties through a mesoscopic scattering region in the presence of a series of time-periodic potentials. Using the method, the quantum charge pumping driven by time-periodic potentials is studied. Jumps in the pumped current are observed at the peak positions of the Wigner delay time. Our main results in both the weak pumping and strong pumping regimes are consistent with experimental results. More interestingly, we also observed the nonzero pumping at the phase difference phi=0 and addressed its relevance to the experimental result.
Non-adiabatic charge pumping through a single-level quantum dot with periodically modulated parameters is studied theoretically. By means of a quantum-master-equation approach the full counting statistics of the system is obtained. We find a trinomial-probability distribution of the charge transfer, which adequately describes the reversal of the pumping current by sweeping the driving frequency. Further, we derive equations of motion for current and noise, and solve those numerically for two different driving schemes. Both show interesting features which can be fully analyzed due to the simple…
We report electron counting experiments in a silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor quantum dot architecture which has been previously demonstrated to generate a quantized current in excess of 80 pA with uncertainty below 30 parts per million. Single-shot detection of electrons pumped into a reservoir dot is performed using a capacitively coupled single-electron transistor. We extract the full probability distribution of the transfer of n electrons per pumping cycle for n = 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4. We find that the probabilities extracted from the counting experiment are in agreement with direct current …
We applied the Floquet scattering-matrix formalism to studying the electronic transport properties in a mesoscopic Dirac system. Using the method, we investigate theoretically quantum pumping driven by a series of time-periodic potentials in graphene monolayer both in the adiabatic and non-adiabatic regimes. Our numerical results demonstrate that adding harmonic modulated potentials can break the time reversal symmetry when no voltage bias is applied to the graphene monolayer. Thus, when the system is pumped with proper dynamic parameters, these scatterers can produce a nonzero dc pumped curre…
It is shown that the variance of the linear dc conductance fluctuations in an open quantum dot under a high-frequency ac pumping depends significantly on the spectral content of the ac field. For a sufficiently strong ac field $γτ_ϕ<< 1$, where $1/τ_ϕ$ is the dephasing rate induced by ac noise and $γ$ is the electron escape rate, the dc conductance fluctuations are much stronger for the harmonic pumping than in the case of the noise ac field of the same intensity. The reduction factor $r$ in a static magnetic field takes the universal value of 2 only for the white--noise pumping. For the stric…
Optical pump-probe techniques are used to generate and measure electron spin polarization in a gallium arsenide epilayer in which the electron spin coherence time exceeds the mode-locked laser repetition period. Resonant spin amplification occurs at magnetic fields at which the electron spin polarization excited by successive laser pulses add constructively. Measurements of Kerr rotation as a function of applied magnetic field reveal nuclear spin polarization that aligns either with or against the external magnetic field depending on whether the applied magnetic field is being decreased or inc…
Periodic driving can create topological phases of matter absent in static systems. In terms of the displacement of the position expectation value of a time-evolving wavepacket in a closed system, a type of adiabatic dynamics in periodically driven systems is studied for general initial states possessing coherence between different Floquet bands. Under one symmetry assumption, the displacement of the wavepacket center over one adiabatic cycle is found to be comprised by two components independent of the time scale of the adiabatic cycle: a weighted integral of the Berry curvature summed over al…
We consider a superconducting qubit coupled to the nonstationary transmission line cavity with modulated frequency taking into account energy dissipation. Previously, it was demonstrated that in the case of a single nonadiabatical modulation of a cavity frequency there are two channels of a two-level system excitation which are due to the absorption of Casimir photons and due to the counterrotating wave processes responsible for the dynamical Lamb effect. We show that the parametric periodical modulation of the resonator frequency can increase dramatically the excitation probability. Remarkabl…
Microscopic theory of counting statistics of electrical noise is reviewed. We discuss a model of passive charge detector based on current fluctuations coupled to a spin, and its relation with the theory of photon counting in quantum optics. The statistics of tunneling current and, in particular, the properties of the third moment are studied in detail. The third moment is shown to be temperature-independent for tunneling in a generic many-body system. Then the statistics of mesoscopic transport is discussed. We consider applications of the functional determinant formula for the generating func…
We study the full charge counting statistics of a charge pump based on a nearly open single electron transistor. The problem is mapped onto an exactly soluble problem of a g=1/2 non-equilibrium Luttinger liquid with an impurity. We obtain an analytic expression for the generating function of the transmitted charge for an arbitrary pumping strength. Even though this model contains fractionally charged excitations only integer transmitted charges can be observed during finite observation times.
In this Letter, we consider the adiabatic charge transport through a normal mesoscopic sample sandwiched by superconductors without modulation of local chemical potentials. The deformation of coherent quasiparticles in the normal metal in the presence of periodically changing phases in the superconductors leads to a charge transport. Both the magnitude and the phase dependence of the charge transferred per period through the sample strongly depend on temperature.
We predict spontaneous generation of superfluid polariton currents in planar microcavities with lateral periodic modulation of both potential and decay rate. A spontaneous breaking of spatial inversion symmetry of a polariton condensate emerges at a critical pumping, and the current direction is stochastically chosen. We analyse the stability of the current with respect to the fluctuations of the condensate. A peculiar spatial current domain structure emerges, where the current direction is switched at the domain walls, and the characteristic domain size and lifetime scale with the pumping pow…
We give a pedestrian interpretation of a formula of Buttiker et. al. (BPT) relating the adiabatically pumped current to the S matrix and its (time) derivatives. We relate the charge in BPT to Berry's phase and the corresponding Brouwer pumping formula to curvature. As applications we derive explicit formulas for the joint probability density of pumping and conductance when the S matrix is uniformly distributed; and derive a new formula that describes hard pumping when the S matrix is periodic in the driving parameters.
We study Markovian stochastic motion on a graph with finite number of nodes and adiabatically periodically driven transition rates. We show that, under general conditions, the quantized currents that appear at low temperatures are a manifestation of topological invariants in the counting statistics of currents. This observation provides an approach for classification of topological properties of the counting statistics, as well as for extensions of the phenomenon of the robust quantization of currents at low temperatures to the properties of the counting statistics which persist to finite temp…
Time-dependent driving influences the quantum and thermodynamic fluctuations of a system, changing the familiar physical picture of electronic noise which is an important source of information the about microscopic mechanism of quantum transport. Giving access to all cumulants of the current, the full counting statistics (FCS) is the powerful theoretical method to study fluctuations in nonequilibrium quantum systems. In this paper, we propose the application of FCS to consider periodic driven junctions. The combination of Floquet theory for time dynamics and nonequilibrium counting-field Green…
We analyze the statistics of charge and energy currents and spin torque in a metallic nanomagnet coupled to a large magnetic metal via a tunnel contact. We derive a Keldysh action for the tunnel barrier, describing the stochastic currents in the presence of a magnetization precessing with the rate $Ω$. In contrast to some earlier approaches, we include the geometric phases that affect the counting statistics. We illustrate the use of the action by deriving spintronic fluctuation relations, the quantum limit of pumped current noise, and consider the fluctuations in two specific cases: the situa…
We investigate the dispersion topology of elastic lattices characterized by spatial stiffness modulation. The modulation is defined by the sampling of a two-dimensional surface, which provides the lattices with topological properties that are usually attributed to two-dimensional crystals. We show that the cyclic variation of the phase of the stiffness modulation leads to a Berry phase accumulation for the Bloch eigenmodes, which is characterized by integer valued Chern numbers for the bands and associated gap labels. The resulting non-trivial gaps are spanned by edge modes localized at one of…
Statistics of charge transport in an adiabatic pump are determined by the dynamics of the scattering matrix S(t). We show that, up to an integer offset, the statistics depend only on the corresponding path N(t)=S^\daggerσ_3 S in the coset space (the sphere for a single channel). For a general loop S(t) we solve for the noise-minimizing pumping strategy. The average current is given by the area enclosed by N(t) in the coset space; its minimal noise by the area of a minimal surface (soap film) spanned by N(t) in the space of all matrices. We formulate conditions for quantization of the pumped ch…
We utilize a time-periodic ratchet-like potential modulation imposed onto a two-dimensional electron system inside a GaAs/Al$_x$Ga$_{1-x}$As heterostructure to evoke a net dc pumping current. The modulation is induced by two sets of interdigitated gates, interlacing off center, which can be independently addressed. When the transducers are driven by two identical but phase-shifted ac signals, a lateral dc pumping current $I(ϕ)$ results, which strongly depends on both, the phase shift $ϕ$ and the waveform $V(t)$ of the imposed gate voltages. We find that for different periodic signals, the phas…
It is shown that the presence of discrete symmetries in Floquet systems connected to metallic reservoirs imprints a definite parity on the charge and heat pumping as a function of the reservoir's chemical potential, $μ$. In particular, when particle-hole symmetry (PHS) holds, the pumping of charge (heat) is an odd (even) function of $μ$. Whereas, if only the product of PHS and parity symmetry is present, pumping of charge (heat) is even (odd) in $μ$. Our results also extend to the presence of other unitary symmetries and provide a simple criterion for reversing (or maintaining) the direction o…
We derive the fluctuation theorem for a stochastic and periodically driven system coupled to two reservoirs with the aid of a master equation. We write down the cumulant generating functions for both the current and entropy production in closed compact forms so as to treat the adiabatic and nonadiabatic contributions systematically. We derive the fluctuation theorem by taking into account the time reversal symmetry and the property that the instantaneous currents flowing into the left and the right reservoir are not equal. It is found that the fluctuation-dissipation relation derived from the …
In a mesoscopic system, under zero bias voltage, a finite charge is transferred by quantum adiabatic pumping by adiabatically and periodically changing two or more control parameters. We obtained expressions for the pumped charge for a ring of three quantum dots (QDs) by choosing the magnetic flux penetrating the ring as one of the control parameters. We found that the pumped charge shows a steplike behavior with respect to the variance of the flux. The value of the step heights is not universal but depends on the trajectory of the control parameters. We discuss the physical origin of this beh…
We set up a general density-operator approach to geometric steady-state pumping through slowly driven open quantum systems. This approach applies to strongly interacting systems that are weakly coupled to multiple reservoirs at high temperature, illustrated by an Anderson quantum dot, but shows potential for generalization. Pumping gives rise to a nonadiabatic geometric phase that can be described by a framework originally developed for classical dissipative systems by Landsberg. This geometric phase is accumulated by the transported observable (charge, spin, energy) and not by the quantum sta…
Thouless pumping provides one of the simplest manifestations of topology in quantum systems, and has attracted a lot of recent interest, both theoretically and experimentally. Since the seminal works by Thouless and Niu in 1983 and 1984, it is argued that the quantization of the pumped charge is robust against weak disorder, but a clear characterization of the localization properties of the relevant states, and the breakdown of quantized transport in the presence of interaction or out of the adiabatic approximation, has been long debated. Thouless pumping is also the first example of a topolog…
The pumping conductance of a disordered two-dimensional Chern insulator scales with increasing size and fixed disorder strength to sharp plateau transitions at well-defined energies between ordinary and quantum Hall insulators. When the disorder strength is scaled to zero as system size increases, the "metallic" regime of fluctuating Chern numbers can extend over the whole band. A simple argument leads to a sort of weighted equipartition of Chern number over minibands in a finite system with periodic boundary conditions: even though there must be strong fluctuations between disorder realizatio…
