Photon-assisted electron-hole shot noise in multi-terminal conductors

TL;DR

This paper interprets photon-assisted shot noise in mesoscopic multi-terminal conductors through electron-hole pair excitations, revealing interference effects and phase distributions in chaotic quantum dots.

Contribution

It introduces a novel interpretation of photon-assisted shot noise using electron-hole pairs and demonstrates how to observe interference effects in multi-terminal conductors.

Findings

Photon-assisted shot noise can be explained by electron-hole pair excitations.

Two out-of-phase AC voltages reveal Hanbury Brown Twiss interference.

Distribution of exchange phases in chaotic quantum dots was characterized.

Abstract

Motivated by a recent experiment by L.-H. Reydellet et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 176803 (2003), we discuss an interpretation of photon-assisted shot noise in mesoscopic multiprobe conductors in terms of electron-hole pair excitations. AC-voltages are applied to the contacts of the sample. Of interest are correlations resulting from the fact that electrons and holes are generated in pairs. We show that with two out-of-phase ac-potentials of equal magnitude and frequency, applied to different contacts, it is possible to trace out the Hanbury Brown Twiss exchange interference correlations in a four probe conductor. We calculate the distribution of Hanbury Brown Twiss phases for a four-probe single channel chaotic dot.