Full counting statistics of nano-electromechanical systems

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical framework for analyzing the full counting statistics in nanoelectromechanical systems, demonstrating its application to molecular vibrations and quantum shuttles, revealing insights into noise and conduction mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces a Markovian master equation-based theory for FCS in NEMS and applies it to specific systems, highlighting its ability to uncover detailed transport properties.

Findings

Numerical evaluation of cumulants for C60 molecules.

Identification of slow switching as the cause of noise enhancement in quantum shuttles.

Demonstration of FCS power in analyzing nanoelectromechanical transport.

Abstract

We develop a theory for the full counting statistics (FCS) for a class of nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS), describable by a Markovian generalized master equation. The theory is applied to two specific examples of current interest: vibrating C60 molecules and quantum shuttles. We report a numerical evaluation of the first three cumulants for the C60-setup; for the quantum shuttle we use the third cumulant to substantiate that the giant enhancement in noise observed at the shuttling transition is due to a slow switching between two competing conduction channels. Especially the last example illustrates the power of the FCS.