# Minimal-excitation single-particle emitters: A comparison of charge and energy transport properties

## TL;DR

This paper compares various minimally exciting single-particle sources in quantum transport, analyzing how their different driving protocols affect charge and energy transport properties and the influence of temperature.

## Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison of different single-particle emitters, highlighting how their specific driving mechanisms influence transport characteristics and temperature effects.

## Key findings

- Different sources show distinct charge and energy current behaviors.
- Temperature impacts transport observables differently depending on energy dependence.
- Disparities in emitted particles and their polarity are characterized.

## Abstract

We investigate different types of time-dependently driven single-particle sources whose common feature is that they produce pulses of integer charge and minimally excite the Fermi sea. These sources are: a slowly driven mesoscopic capacitor, a Lorentzian-shaped time-dependent bias voltage, and a local gate-voltage modulation of a quantum Hall edge state. They differ by their specific driving protocols, e.g., they have a pure ac driving or a driving with a dc component. In addition, only in the first of these setups, strong confinement leading to a discrete energy spectrum of the conductor, is exploited for the single-particle emission. Here, we study if and how these basic differences impact transport properties. Specifically, we address time- and energy-resolved charge and energy currents, as well as their zero-frequency correlators (charge-, energy- and mixed noise), as they are frequently used to characterize experiments in quantum optics with electrons. Beyond disparities due to a different number and polarity of particles emitted per period, we in particular identify differences in the impact, which temperature has on the observables for sources with and without energy-dependent scattering properties. We trace back these characteristics to a small set of relevant parameter ratios.