Line Widths of Single-Electron Tunneling Oscillations: Experiment and Numerical Simulations

TL;DR

This paper combines experimental and numerical approaches to study single-electron tunneling oscillations in a one-dimensional array, revealing that the line width of oscillations scales with frequency and validating the results with simulations.

Contribution

It provides the first combined experimental and numerical analysis of line widths in single-electron tunneling oscillations in a 1D array.

Findings

Line width of oscillations is proportional to frequency.

Experimental data matches numerical simulations.

Single-electron detection achieved at picoampere currents.

Abstract

We present experimental and numerical results from a real-time detection of time-correlated single-electron tunneling oscillations in a one-dimensional series array of small tunnel junctions. The electrons tunnel with a frequency f=I/e, where I is the current and e is the electron charge. Experimentally, we have connected a single-electron transistor to the last array island, and in this way measured currents from 5 fA to 1 pA by counting the single electrons. We find that the line width of the oscillation is proportional to the frequency f. The experimental data agrees well with numerical simulations.