We develop a scheme for the computation of the full-counting statistics of transport described by Markovian master equations with an arbitrary time dependence. It is based on a hierarchy of generalized density operators, where the trace of each operator yields one cumulant. This direct relation offers a better numerical efficiency than the equivalent number-resolved master equation. The proposed method is particularly useful for conductors with an elaborate time-dependence stemming, e.g., from pulses or combinations of slow and fast parameter switching. As a test bench for the evaluation of the numerical stability, we consider time-independent problems for which the full-counting statistics can be computed by other means. As applications, we study cumulants of higher order for two time-dependent transport problems of recent interest, namely steady-state coherent transfer by adiabatic passage and Landau-Zener-Stückelberg-Majorana interference in an open double quantum dot.
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…
We present a formalism to calculate finite-frequency current correlations in interacting nanoscale conductors. We work within the n-resolved density matrix approach and obtain a multi-time cumulant generating function that provides the fluctuation statistics, solely from the spectral decomposition of the Liouvillian. We apply the method to the frequency-dependent third cumulant of the current through a single resonant level and through a double quantum dot. Our results, which show that deviations from Poissonian behaviour strongly depend on frequency, demonstrate the importance of finite-frequ…
It is shown that a one-channel mesoscopic conductor in an ohmic environment can be mapped to the problem of a backscattering impurity in a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL). This allows to determine non perturbatively the effect of the environment on $I-V$ curves, and to find an exact relationship between dynamic Coulomb blockade and shot noise. We investigate critically how this relationship compares to recent proposals in the literature. The full counting statistics is determined at zero temperature.
We investigate the effect of weak interactions on the full counting statistics of charge transfer through an arbitrary mesoscopic conductor. We show that the main effect can be incorporated into an energy dependence of the transmission eigenvalues and study this dependence in a non-perturbative approach. An unexpected result is that all mesoscopic conductors behave at low energies like either a single or a double tunnel junction, which divides them into two broad classes.
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 review several ways of defining the statistics of charge that is transmitted through an electric circuit, the so-called "counting statistics". We first pursue two approaches that explain the origin of "negative probabilities" that have been found earlier in this context. The first analysis involves degrees of freedom of the electric circuit only. In the second approach an idealized charge detector is introduced. We study then general linear detectors and how their back action on the electric conductor affects the statistics of transferred charge. Phase-coherent conductors in the presence of…
The counting statistics (CS) for charges passing through a coherent conductor is the most general quantity that characterizes electronic transport. CS not only depends on the transport properties of the conductor but also depends on the correlations among particles which compose the incident beam. In this paper we present general results for the CS of entangled electron pairs traversing a beam splitter and we show that the probability that Q charges have passed is not binomial, as in the uncorrelated case, but rather it is symmetric with respect to the average transferred charge. We furthermor…
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…
In this paper we derive the Clauser-Horne (CH) inequality for the full electron counting statistics in a mesoscopic multiterminal conductor and we discuss its properties. We first consider the idealized situation in which a flux of entangled electrons is generated by an entangler. Given a certain average number of incoming entangled electrons, the CH inequality can be evaluated for different numbers of transmitted particles. Strong violations occur when the number of transmitted charges on the two terminals is the same ($Q_1=Q_2$), whereas no violation is found for $Q_1\ne Q_2$. We then consid…
We discuss how threshold detectors can be used for a direct measurement of the full counting statistics (FCS) of current fluctuations and how to implement Jose phson junctions in this respect. We propose a scheme to characterize the full co unting statistics from the current dependence of the escape rate measured. We il lustrate the scheme with explicit results for tunnel, diffusive and quasi-ballis tic mesoscopic conductors.
A theory is presented for the photodetection statistics of radiation produced by current fluctuations in a phase-coherent conductor. Deviations are found from the Poisson statistics that would result from a classical current. For detection in a narrow frequency interval, the photocount distribution has the negative-binomial form of black-body radiation if this frequency interval is less than the mean current in the conductor. When electronic localization sets in, a different type of super-Poissonian photon statistics results.
We present a stochastic path integral method to calculate the full counting statistics of conductors with energy conserving dephasing probes and dissipative voltage probes. The approach is explained for the experimentally important case of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, but is easily generalized to more complicated setups. For all geometries where dephasing may be modeled by a single one-channel dephasing probe we prove that our method yields the same full counting statistics as phase averaging of the cumulant generating function.
We present the first study of the statistics of GHz photons in quantum circuits, using Hanbury-Brown and Twiss correlations. The superpoissonian and poissonian photon statistics of thermal and coherent sources respectively made of a resistor and a radiofrequency generator are measured down to the quantum regime at milliKelvin temperatures. As photon correlations are linked to the second and fourth moments of current fluctuations, this experiment, which is based on current cryogenic electronics, may become a standard for probing electron/photon statistics in quantum conductors
We present a Floquet scattering theory of electron waiting time distributions in periodically driven quantum conductors. We employ a second-quantized formulation that allows us to relate the waiting time distribution to the Floquet scattering matrix of the system. As an application we evaluate the electron waiting times for a quantum point contact, modulating either the applied voltage (external driving) or the transmission probability (internal driving) periodically in time. Lorentzian-shaped voltage pulses are of particular interest as they lead to the emission of clean single-particle excit…
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 calculate the distribution of current fluctuations in two simple exclusion models. Although these models are classical, we recover even for small systems such as a simple or a double barrier, the same distibution of current as given by traditionnal formalisms for quantum mesoscopic conductors. Due to their simplicity, the full counting statistics in exclusion models can be reduced to the calculation of the largest eigenvalue of a matrix, the size of which is the number of internal configurations of the system. As examples, we derive the shot noise power and higher order statistics of curren…
We investigate the effects of Coulomb interaction on charge transfer through a quantum dot attached to a normal and a superconducting lead. While for voltages much larger than the gap we recover the usual result for normal conductors, for voltages much smaller than the gap superconducting correlations lead to a drastically different behavior. Especially, the usual charge doubling in the normal case is reflected in the occurence of quartets due to the onsite interaction.
We present here a novel approach to evaluation of the weak localization correction (WLC) to transport properties of a mesoscopic conductor. It is based on an extension of Keldysh technique and allows one to evaluate the full counting statistics of the current in the conductor. In our opinion, it provides a fresh look on the theory of weak localization.
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.
In order to fully characterize the noise associated with electron transport, with its severe consequences for solid-state quantum information systems, the theory of full counting statistics has been developed. It accounts for correlation effects associated with the statistics and effects of entanglement, but it remains a non-trivial task to account for interaction effects. In this article we present two examples: we describe electron transport through quantum dots with strong charging effects beyond perturbation theory in the tunneling, and we analyze current fluctuations in a diffusive intera…
We study the full probability distribution of the charge transmitted through a mesoscopic diffusive conductor during a measurement time T. We have considered a semi-classical model, with an exclusion principle in a discretized single-particle phase-space. In the large T limit, numerical simulations show a universal probability distribution which agrees very well with the quantum mechanical prediction of Lee, Levitov and Yakovets [PRB {51} 4079 (1995)] for the charge counting statistics. Special attention is given to its third cumulant, including an analysis of finite size effects and of some e…
Diffusive molecules share the 1/3 shot noise suppression of quantum conductors
The University of Tokyo（东京大学）；Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo（东京大学产业科学研究所）；LAAS-CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心 LAAS 实验室）；Aix Marseille Univ（艾克斯-马赛大学）；Université de Toulon（土伦大学）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；NTT Basic Research Laboratories（NTT 基础研究实验室）；Institute for Solid State Physics, The University of Tokyo（东京大学固体物理研究所）；ITODYS-CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心 ITODYS 研究所）
We study the noise properties of ballistic conductors with carriers satisfying fractional exclusion statistics. To test directly the nature of exclusion statistics we found that systems under weakly degenerate conditions should be considered. Typical of these systems is that the chemical potential, $μ$ is in the thermal range $|μ|<3k_{B}T$. In these conditions the noise properties under current saturation are found to depend upon the statistical parameter $g$, displaying suppressed shot noise for $1/2\leq g\leq 1$, and enhanced shot noise for $0<g<1/2$, according to the attractive or repulsive…
We discuss the counting statistics and current noise associated with the double Josephson quasiparticle resonance point in a superconducting single electron transistor. The counting statistics are in general phase-dependent, despite the fact that the average current has no dependence on phase. Focusing on parameter regimes where the counting statistics have no phase-dependence, we use a general relation first derived by MacDonald in 1948 to obtain the full frequency-dependent shot noise directly from the counting statistics, without any further approximations. We comment on problems posed by t…
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 review the relations between the full counting statistics and the field theory of electric circuits. We demonstrate that for large conductances the counting statistics is determined by non-trivial saddle-point of the field. Coulomb effects in this limit are presented as quantum corrections that can stongly renormalize the action at low energies.
We report the measurement of the third moment of current fluctuations in a short metallic wire at low temperature. The data are deduced from the statistics of voltage fluctuations across the conductor using a careful determination of environmental contributions. Our results at low bias agree very well with theoretical predictions for coherent transport with no fitting parameter. By increasing the bias voltage we explore the cross-over from elastic to inelastic transport.
We study analytically the full counting statistics of charge transport through single molecules, strongly coupled to a weakly damped vibrational mode. The specifics of transport in this regime - a hierarchical sequence of avalanches of transferred charges, interrupted by "quiet" periods - make the counting statistics strongly non-Gaussian. We support our findings for the counting statistics as well as for the frequency-dependent noise power by numerical simulations, finding excellent agreement.
We derive constraints on the statistics of the charge transfer between two conductors in the model of arbitrary time-dependent instant scattering of non-interacting fermions at zero temperature. The constraints are formulated in terms of analytic properties of the generating function: its zeroes must lie on the negative real axis. This result generalizes existing studies for scattering by a time-independent scatterer under time-dependent bias voltage.
The crossover from orthogonal to the unitary universality classes in the distribution of the anomalously localized states (ALS) in two-dimensional disordered conductors is traced as a function of magnetic field. We demonstrate that the microscopic origin of the crossover is the change in the symmetry of the underlying disorder configurations, that are responsible for ALS. These disorder configurations are of weak magnitude (compared to the Fermi energy) and of small size (compared to the mean free path). We find their shape explicitly by means of the direct optimal fluctuation method.
Voltage and dephasing probes introduce incoherent inelastic and incoherent quasi-elastic scattering into a coherent mesoscopic conductor. We discuss in detail the concepts of voltage and dephasing probes and develop a full counting statistics approach to investigate their effect on the transport statistics. The formalism is applied to several experimentally relevant examples. A comparison of different probe models and with procedures like phase averaging over an appropriate phase distribution shows that there is a perfect equivalence between the models for the case of one single-channel probe.…
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.
We present measurements of the time-dependent fluctuations in electrical current in a voltage-biased tunnel junction. We were able to simultaneously extract the first three moments of the tunnel current counting statistics. Detailed comparison of the second and the third moment reveals that counting statistics is accurately described by the Poissonian distribution expected for spontaneous current fluctuations due to electron charge discreteness, realized in tunneling transport at negligible coupling to environment.
Full counting statistics is a powerful tool to characterize the noise and correlations in transport through mesoscopic systems. In this work, we propose the theory of conditional spin counting statistics, i.e., the statistical fluctuations of spin-up (down) current given the observation of the spin-down (up) current. In the context of transport through a single quantum dot, it is demonstrated that a strong Coulomb interaction leads to a conditional spin counting statistics that exhibits a substantial change in comparison to that without Coulomb repulsion. It thus can be served as an effective …
We consider the zero frequency fluctuations of charge inside a mesoscopic conductor in the large capacitance limit. In analogy to current counting statistics we derive the characteristic function of charge fluctuations in terms of the scattering matrix of the conductor. Using random matrix theory we evaluate the characteristic function semi-analytically for chaotic cavities. Our result is universal in the sense that it describes not only the fluctuations of charge, but of any observable quantity inside the cavity. We discuss equilibrium and non-equilibrium fluctuations and extend our theory to…
We formulate a general 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 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 sign change of ${\…
We present a theory for the full distribution of current fluctuations in incoherent diffusive superconducting junctions, subjected to a voltage bias. This theory of full counting statistics of incoherent multiple Andreev reflections is valid for arbitrary applied voltage. We present a detailed discussion of the properties of the first four cumulants as well as the low and high voltage regimes of the full counting statistics. The work is an extension of the results of Pilgram and the author, Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 086806 (2005).
The coupling of the charge carriers passing through a molecule bridging two bulky conductors with local vibrational modes of the molecule, gives rise to distinct features in the electronic transport properties on one hand, and to nonequilibrium features in the vibrations' properties, e.g., their population, on the other. Here we explore theoretically a generic model for a molecular junction biased by an arbitrary dc voltage in the weak-coupling regime. We analyze the signature of the electron-vibration interaction on the full-counting statistics of the current fluctuations (i.e., the cumulant …
Using a microscopic model for stochastic transport through a single quantum dot that is modified by the Coulomb interaction of environmental (weakly coupled) quantum dots, we derive generic properties of the full counting statistics for multi-stable Markovian transport systems. We study the temporal crossover from multi-modal to broad uni-modal distributions depending on the initial mixture, the long-term asymptotics and the divergence of the cumulants in the limit of a large number of transport branches. Our findings demonstrate that the counting statistics of a single resonant level may be u…
We explore the full counting statistics of single electron tunneling through a quantum dot using a quantum point contact as non-invasive high bandwidth charge detector. The distribution of counted tunneling events is measured as a function of gate and source-drain-voltage for several consecutive electron numbers on the quantum dot. For certain configurations we observe super-Poissonian statistics for bias voltages at which excited states become accessible. The associated counting distributions interestingly show a bimodal characteristic. Analyzing the time dependence of the number of electron …
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…
The concepts of Wigner time delay and Wigner-Smith matrix allow to characterize temporal aspects of a quantum scattering process. The article reviews the statistical properties of the Wigner time delay for disordered systems; the case of disorder in 1D with a chiral symmetry is discussed and the relation with exponential functionals of the Brownian motion underlined. Another approach for the analysis of time delay statistics is the random matrix approach, from which we review few results. As a pratical illustration, we briefly outline a theory of nonlinear transport and AC transport developed …
We describe a method for calculating the counting statistics of electronic transport through nanoscale devices with both sequential and cotunneling contributions. The method is based upon a perturbative expansion of the von Neumann equation in Liouvillian space, with current cumulants calculated from the resulting nonMarkovian master equation without further approximation. As application, we consider transport through a single quantum dot and discuss the effects of cotunneling on noise and skewness, as well as the properties of various approximation schemes.
We evaluate the joint distributions of electron waiting times in coherent conductors described by scattering theory. Successive electron waiting times in a single-channel conductor are found to be correlated due to the fermionic statistics encoded in the many-body state. Our formalism allows us also to investigate the waiting times between charge transfer events in different outgoing channels. As an application we consider a quantum point contact in a chiral setup with one or both input channels biased by either a static or a time-dependent periodic voltage described by Floquet theory. The the…
Destructive interference of single-electron tunneling between three quantum dots can trap an electron in a coherent superposition of charge on two of the dots. Coupling to external charges causes decoherence of this superposition, and in the presence of a large bias voltage each decoherence event transfers a certain number of electrons through the device. We calculate the counting statistics of the transferred charges, finding a crossover from sub-Poissonian to super-Poissonian statistics with increasing ratio of tunnel and decoherence rates.
We present here a quantum mechanical framework for defining the statistics of measurements of time integrals of A(t), A(t) being a quantum mechanical variable. This is a generalization of the so-called full counting statistics proposed earlier for DC electric currents. We develop an influence functional formalism that allows us to study the quantum system along with the measuring device thus fully accounting for the action of the detector on the system to be measured. We define the full counting statistics of an arbitrary variable by means of an evolution operator that relates initial and fina…
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…
The joint probability distribution in the full counting statistics (FCS) for noninteracting electrons is discussed for an arbitrary number of initially separate subsystems which are connected at t=0 and separated at a later time. A simple method to obtain the leading order long time contribution to the logarithm of the characteristic function is presented which simplifies earlier approaches. New explicit results for the determinant involving the scattering matrices are found. The joint probability distribution for two leads is discussed for Y-junctions and dots connected to four leads.
We investigate the dynamics of electron spin qubits in quantum dots. Measurement of the qubit state is realized by a charge current through the dot. The dynamics is described in the framework of the quantum trajectory approach, widely used in quantum optics, and we show that it can be applied successfully to problems in condensed matter physics. The relevant master equation dynamics is unravelled to simulate stochastic tunneling events of the current through the dot.Quantum trajectories are then used to extract the counting statistics of the current. We show how, in combination with an electro…
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…
Exact numerical results for the full counting statistics (FCS) of a one-dimensional tight-binding model of noninteracting electrons are presented at finite temperatures using an identity recently presented by Abanov and Ivanov. A similar idea is used to derive a new expression for the cumulant generating function for a system consisting of two quasi-one-dimensional leads connected by a quantum dot in the long time limit. This provides a generalization of the Levitov-Lesovik formula for such systems.
We study the effect of Coulomb interaction on the full counting statistics of an Aharonov-Bohm (AB) interferometer with a single-level quantum dot in one arm in the regime of weak dot-lead and lead-lead tunnel couplings. In the absence of Coulomb interaction, the interference processes are of nonresonant nature with an even AB flux dependence and obey bidirectional Poissonian statistics. For large charging energy, the statistic of these processes changes. In addition, processes of resonant nature with an odd flux dependence appear. In the limit of strongly asymmetric tunnel couplings from the …
The full counting statistics of a molecular level weakly interacting with a local phonon mode is derived. We find an analytic formula that gives the behavior of arbitrary irreducible moments of the distribution upon phonon excitation. The underlying competition between quasi-elastic and inelastic processes results in the formation of domains in parameter space characterized by a given sign in the jump of the irreducible moments. In the limit of perfect transmission, the corresponding distribution is distorted from Gaussian statistics for electrons to Poissonian transfer of holes above the inel…
We propose a theory that treats the current, noise, and, generally, the full current statistics of electron transfer in a mesoscopic system in a unified, simple and efficient way. The theory appears to be a circuit theory of $2\times 2$ matrices associated with Keldysh Green functions. We illustrate the theory by considering the big fluctuations of currents in various three-terminal circuits.
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…
When a mesoscopic conductor is coupled to a high-quality electromagnetic cavity the flow of charges and the flux of photons leaking out of the cavity can both depend strongly on the coupled quantum dynamics of the system. Using a voltage-biased Josephson junction as a model system, we demonstrate that there is a simple connection between the full counting statistics of the charges and the photons in the long time limit. We then reveal the intimate relation between the counting statistics and the nonlinear dynamics of the system, uncovering novel regimes of coherent charge and photon transport …
We consider the scattering matrix approach to quantum electron transport in meso- and nano-conductors. This approach is an alternative to the more conventional kinetic equation and Green's function approaches, and often is more efficient for coherent conductors (especially for proving general relations) and typically more transparent. We provide a description of both time-averaged quantities (for example, current-voltage characteristics) and current fluctuations in time -- noise, as well as full counting statistics of charge transport in a finite time. In addition to normal conductors, we cons…
Interactions between nanoscale semiconductor structures form the basis for charge detectors in the solid state. Recent experimental advances have demonstrated the on-chip detection of single electron transport through a quantum dot (QD). The discreteness of charge in units of e leads to intrinsic fluctuations in the electrical current, known as shot noise. To measure these single-electron fluctuations a nearby coherent conductor, called a quantum point contact (QPC), interacts with the QD and acts as a detector. An important property of the QPC charge detector is noninvasiveness: the system ph…
