Elementary Charge Transfer Processes in Mesoscopic Conductors

TL;DR

This paper analyzes charge transfer processes in mesoscopic conductors driven by time-dependent voltages, identifying elementary electron and electron-hole pair transfer events, and relates these to measurable noise characteristics.

Contribution

It introduces a method to decompose charge transfer statistics into elementary processes, including at finite temperature, and applies it to analyze noise oscillations under ac voltage drive.

Findings

Unidirectional and bidirectional charge transfers occur at zero temperature.

Noise oscillates with increasing drive amplitude due to electron-hole pair generation.

The method allows calculation of higher-order current correlators at finite temperature.

Abstract

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 partitioned into different outgoing terminals. The probabilities of elementary processes can be probed by noise measurements: the unidirectional processes set the dc noise level while bidirectional ones give rise to the excess noise. For ac voltage drive, the noise oscillates with increasing the driving amplitude. The decomposition of the noise into the contributions of elementary processes identifies the origin of these oscillations: the number of electron-hole pairs generated per cycle increases with increasing the amplitude. The decomposition of the noise into elementary processes is studied for different time-dependent voltages. The method we use is also suitable for systematic calculation of higher-order current correlators at finite temperature. We obtain current noise power and the third cumulant in the presence of time-dependent voltage drive. The charge transfer statistics at finite temperature can be interpreted in terms of multiple charge transfers with probabilities which depend on energy and temperature.