Nonlinear effects of phonon fluctuations on transport through nanoscale junctions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how electron-phonon interactions influence charge transport statistics in nanoscale junctions, revealing significant nonlinear effects due to feedback mechanisms even at weak coupling.

Contribution

It introduces an analytical approach to account for feedback between phonon and electronic distributions in quantum regimes, extending beyond lowest order perturbation theory.

Findings

Higher nonlinearities in voltage dependence of charge cumulants due to feedback.

Nonlinear effects are significant even with weak electron-phonon coupling.

Feedback mechanisms alter full counting statistics in molecular junctions.

Abstract

We analyze the effect of electron-phonon coupling on the full counting statistics of a molecular junction beyond the lowest order perturbation theory. Our approach allows to take into account analytically the feedback between the non-equilibrium phonon and electronic distributions in the quantum regime. We show that even for junctions with high transmission and relatively weak electron-phonon coupling this feedback gives rise to increasingly higher nonlinearities in the voltage dependence of the cumulants of the transmitted charges distribution.