Vibrational Coherences in Nano-Elastic Tunneling

TL;DR

This paper investigates how single-electron tunneling in nano-oscillators creates vibrational coherences, revealing quantum tunneling effects through current noise spectrum analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a combined numerical and theoretical approach to visualize quantum tunneling of mechanical vibrations in nano-scale systems.

Findings

Quantum tunneling manifests in electronic current noise spectrum.

Double-well potential arises from image charges in nano-oscillators.

Method enables visualization of vibrational coherences in tunneling processes.

Abstract

Charging a nano-scale oscillator by single electron tunneling leads to an effective double-well potential due to image charges. We combine exact numerical diagonalizations with generalized Master equations and show that the resulting quantum tunneling of the mechanical degree of freedom can be visualized in the electronic current noise spectrum.