Microscopic analysis of shot-noise suppression in nondegenerate diffusive conductors

TL;DR

This paper theoretically investigates how long-range Coulomb interactions suppress shot noise in nondegenerate diffusive conductors, analyzing the effects of scattering, transport regimes, and dimensionality through Monte Carlo simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive Monte Carlo simulation approach to study shot-noise suppression mechanisms considering Coulomb interactions and transport regimes in nondegenerate conductors.

Findings

Coulomb interactions significantly suppress shot noise at high bias.

Suppression factor varies with dimensionality: ~1/3 in 3D, ~1/2 in 2D, 0.7 in 1D.

Inelastic regimes suppress shot noise to thermal levels.

Abstract

We present a theoretical investigation of shot-noise suppression due to long-range Coulomb interaction in nondegenerate diffusive conductors. Calculations make use of an ensemble Monte Carlo simulator self-consistently coupled with a one-dimensional Poisson solver. We analyze the noise in a lightly doped active region surrounded by two contacts acting as thermal reservoirs. By taking the doping of the injecting contacts and the applied voltage as variable parameters, the influence of elastic and inelastic scattering in the active region is investigated. The transition from ballistic to diffusive transport regimes under different contact injecting statistics is analyzed and discussed. Provided significant space-charge effects take place inside the active region, long-range Coulomb interaction is found to play an essential role in suppressing the shot noise at $qU \gg k_BT$. In the elastic diffusive regime, momentum space dimensionality is found to modify the suppression factor $\gamma$, which within numerical uncertainty takes values respectively of about 1/3, 1/2 and 0.7 in the 3D, 2D and 1D cases. In the inelastic diffusive regime, shot noise is suppressed to the thermal value.