Enhancement of shot noise due to the fluctuation of Coulomb interaction

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical approach using NEGF-DFT to analyze how Coulomb interaction fluctuations influence shot noise in atomic junctions, revealing super-Poissonian noise behavior in NDR regions.

Contribution

The authors introduce a formalism to incorporate Coulomb interaction fluctuations into shot noise calculations within NEGF-DFT, highlighting their impact on noise characteristics.

Findings

Coulomb interaction fluctuations increase the Fano factor above 1 in NDR regions.

The formalism predicts super-Poissonian shot noise due to Coulomb fluctuations.

First-principles calculations show NDR behavior in atomic carbon wire junctions.

Abstract

We have developed a theoretical formalism to investigate the contribution of fluctuation of Coulomb interaction to the shot noise based on Keldysh non-equilibrium Green's function method. We have applied our theory to study the behavior of dc shot noise of atomic junctions using the method of nonequilibrium Green's function combined with the density functional theory (NEGF-DFT). In particular, for atomic carbon wire consisting 4 carbon atoms in contact with two Al(100) electrodes, first principles calculation within NEGF-DFT formalism shows a negative differential resistance (NDR) region in I-V curve at finite bias due to the effective band bottom of the Al lead. We have calculated the shot noise spectrum using the conventional gauge invariant transport theory with Coulomb interaction considered explicitly on the Hartree level along with exchange and correlation effect. Although the Fano factor is enhanced from 0.6 to 0.8 in the NDR region, the expected super-Poissonian behavior in the NDR regionis not observed. When the fluctuation of Coulomb interaction is included in the shot noise, our numerical results show that the Fano factor is greater than one in the NDR region indicating a super-Poissonian behavior.