Probing charge and heat current noise by frequency-dependent temperature and potential fluctuations

TL;DR

This paper proposes a theoretical method to probe charge and heat current fluctuations in mesoscopic conductors by analyzing frequency-dependent temperature and potential fluctuations in a coupled probe, especially applied to single-electron sources.

Contribution

It introduces a Boltzmann-Langevin approach to relate probe fluctuations to source current noise, enabling direct measurement of charge and energy noise in driven nanoelectronic systems.

Findings

Probe fluctuations reveal charge and heat current noise characteristics.

Background and probe-induced fluctuations do not obscure source noise detection.

Method is effective for single-electron sources in quantum Hall systems.

Abstract

The energetic properties of electron transport in mesoscopic and nanoscale conductors is of large current interest. Here we theoretically investigate the possibility of probing fluctuations of charge and heat currents as well as their mixed correlations via fluctuations of the temperature and electrochemical potential of a probe coupled to the conductor. Our particular interest is devoted to the charge and energy noise stemming from time-dependently driven nanoelectronic systems designed for the controlled emission of single electrons, even though our setup is appropriate for more general AC driving schemes. We employ a Boltzmann-Langevin approach in order to relate the frequency-dependent electrochemical potential and temperature fluctuations in the probe to the bare charge and energy current fluctuations emitted from the electron source. We apply our findings to the prominent example of an on-demand single-electron source, realized by a driven mesoscopic capacitor in the quantum Hall regime. We show that neither the background fluctuations of the probe in the absence of the working source, nor the fluctuations induced by the probe hinder the access to the sought-for direct source noise for a large range of parameters.