216 research outputs found
Frequency Scales for Current Statistics of Mesoscopic Conductors
We calculate the third cumulant of current in a chaotic cavity with contacts
of arbitrary transparency as a function of frequency. Its frequency dependence
drastically differs from that of the conventional noise. In addition to a
dispersion at the inverse RC time characteristic of charge relaxation, it has a
low-frequency dispersion at the inverse dwell time of electrons in the cavity.
This effect is suppressed if both contacts have either large or small
transparencies.Comment: 4 page
Frequency dependent third cumulant of current in diffusive conductors
We calculate the frequency dispersion of the third cumulant of current in
diffusive-metal contacts. The cumulant exhibits a dispersion at the inverse
time of diffusion across the contact, which is typically much smaller than the
inverse time. This dispersion is much more pronounced in the case of
strong electron-electron scattering than in the case of purely elastic
scattering because of a different symmetry of the relevant second-order
correlation functions.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure
Statistics of Heat Transfer in Mesoscopic Circuits
A method to calculate the statistics of energy exchange between quantum
systems is presented. The generating function of this statistics is expressed
through a Keldysh path integral. The method is first applied to the problem of
heat dissipation from a biased mesoscopic conductor into the adjacent
reservoirs. We then consider energy dissipation in an electrical circuit around
a mesoscopic conductor. We derive the conditions under which measurements of
the fluctuations of heat dissipation can be used to investigate higher order
cumulants of the charge counting statistics of a mesoscopic conductor.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure
Anomalous density of states in a metallic film in proximity with a superconductor
We investigated the local electronic density of states in
superconductor-normal metal (Nb-Au) bilayers using a very low temperature (60
mK) STM. High resolution tunneling spectra measured on the normal metal (Au)
surface show a clear proximity effect with an energy gap of reduced amplitude
compared to the bulk superconductor (Nb) gap. Within this mini-gap, the density
of states does not reach zero and shows clear sub-gap features. We show that
the experimental spectra cannot be described with the well-established Usadel
equations from the quasi-classical theory.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
Electronic Origin of the Inhomogeneous Pairing Interaction in the High-Tc Superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+d
Identifying the mechanism of superconductivity in the high-temperature
cuprate superconductors is one of the major outstanding problems in physics. We
report local measurements of the onset of superconducting pairing in the
high-transition temperature (Tc) superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+d using a
lattice-tracking spectroscopy technique with a scanning tunneling microscope.
We can determine the temperature dependence of the pairing energy gaps, the
electronic excitations in the absence of pairing, and the effect of the local
coupling of electrons to bosonic excitations. Our measurements reveal that the
strength of pairing is determined by the unusual electronic excitations of the
normal state, suggesting that strong electron-electron interactions rather than
low-energy (<0.1 volts) electron-boson interactions are responsible for
superconductivity in the cuprates
ThermoElectric Transport Properties of a Chain of Quantum Dots with Self-Consistent Reservoirs
We introduce a model for charge and heat transport based on the
Landauer-Buttiker scattering approach. The system consists of a chain of
quantum dots, each of them being coupled to a particle reservoir. Additionally,
the left and right ends of the chain are coupled to two particle reservoirs.
All these reservoirs are independent and can be described by any of the
standard physical distributions: Maxwell-Boltzmann, Fermi-Dirac and
Bose-Einstein. In the linear response regime, and under some assumptions, we
first describe the general transport properties of the system. Then we impose
the self-consistency condition, i.e. we fix the boundary values (T_L,\mu_L) and
(T_R,mu_R), and adjust the parameters (T_i,mu_i), for i = 1,...,N, so that the
net average electric and heat currents into all the intermediate reservoirs
vanish. This condition leads to expressions for the temperature and chemical
potential profiles along the system, which turn out to be independent of the
distribution describing the reservoirs. We also determine the average electric
and heat currents flowing through the system and present some numerical
results, using random matrix theory, showing that these currents are typically
governed by Ohm and Fourier laws.Comment: Minor changes (45 pages
Dephasing and Measurement Efficiency via a Quantum Dot Detector
We study charge detection and controlled dephasing of a mesoscopic system via
a quantum dot detector (QDD), where the mesoscopic system and the QDD are
capacitively coupled. The QDD is considered to have coherent resonant
tunnelling via a single level. It is found that the dephasing rate is
proportional to the square of the conductance of the QDD for the Breit-Wigner
model, showing that the dephasing is completely different from the shot noise
of the detector. The measurement rate, on the other hand, shows a dip near the
resonance. Our findings are peculiar especially for a symmetric detector in the
following aspect: The dephasing rate is maximum at resonance of the QDD where
the detector conductance is insensitive to the charge state of the mesoscopic
system. As a result, the efficiency of the detector shows a dip and vanishes at
resonance, in contrast to the single-channel symmetric non-resonant detector
that has always a maximum efficiency. We find that this difference originates
from a very general property of the scattering matrix: The abrupt phase change
exists in the scattering amplitudes in the presence of the symmetry, which is
insensitive to the detector current but {\em stores} the information of the
quantum state of the mesoscopic system.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure
Aspects of metallic low-temperature transport in Mott-insulator/ band-insulator superlattices: optical conductivity and thermoelectricity
We investigate the low-temperature electrical and thermal transport
properties in atomically precise metallic heterostructures involving
strongly-correlated electron systems. The model of the Mott-insulator/
band-insulator superlattice was discussed in the framework of the slave-boson
mean-field approximation and transport quantities were derived by use of the
Boltzmann transport equation in the relaxation-time approximation. The results
for the optical conductivity are in good agreement with recently published
experimental data on (LaTiO/(SrTiO superlattices and allow us to
estimate the values of key parameters of the model. Furthermore, predictions
for the thermoelectric response were made and the dependence of the Seebeck
coefficient on model parameters was studied in detail. The width of the
Mott-insulating material was identified as the most relevant parameter, in
particular, this parameter provides a way to optimize the thermoelectric power
factor at low temperatures
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