Noise of a quantum dot system in the cotunneling regime

2000/10/31 by Eugene V. Sukhorukov, Guido Burkard, Daniel Loss · 155 citations
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Chemistry #Condensed matter physics #Coulomb #Coulomb blockade #Degenerate energy levels #Electron #Fano factor #Noise (video) #Non-equilibrium thermodynamics #Operator (biology) #Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum dot #Quantum mechanics #Quantum tunnelling #Semiconductor Quantum Structures and Devices #Shot noise #Voltage #cond-mat.mes-hall

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.63.125315

published in Physical review. B, Condensed matter 63(12) (American Physical Society) · 20 pages, 4 figures. v2: two references added, technical improvements, results unchanged

arxiv created 2001/01/22 · openalex publication_date 2001/03/07 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We study the noise of the cotunneling current through one or several tunnel-coupled quantum dots in the Coulomb blockade regime. The various regimes of weak and strong, elastic and inelastic cotunneling are analyzed for quantum dot systems (QDS) with few-level, nearly degenerate, and continuous electronic spectra. We find that in contrast to sequential tunneling, where the noise is either Poissonian (due to uncorrelated tunneling events) or sub-Poissonian (suppressed by charge conservation on the QDS), the noise in inelastic cotunneling can be super-Poissonian due to switching between QDS states carrying currents of different strengths. In the case of weak cotunneling we prove a nonequilibrium fluctuation-dissipation theorem, which leads to a universal expression for the noise-to-current ratio (Fano factor). In order to investigate strong cotunneling we develop a microscopic theory of cotunneling based on the density-operator formalism and using the projection operator technique. The master equation for the QDS and the expressions for current and noise in cotunneling in terms of the stationary state of the QDS are derived and applied to QDS with a nearly degenerate and continuous spectrum.

Citations

• Langevin approach for the shot noise calculation in single-electron tunneling
• Thermal Agitation of Electric Charge in Conductors
• Relation between the Anderson and Kondo Hamiltonians
• Irreversibility and Generalized Noise
• Shot Noise in Mesoscopic Conductors

Cited by

• Rescaling of applied oscillating voltages in small Josephson junctions
• Determination of tunneling charge via current measurements
• Magnetic field switching in parallel quantum dots
• Full counting statistics and shot noise of cotunneling in quantum dots and single-molecule transistors
• Counting quantum jumps: A summary and comparison of fixed-time and fluctuating-time statistics in electron transport
• Correlations of heat and charge currents in quantum-dot thermoelectric engines
• Electron Entanglement via a Quantum Dot
• Cotunneling current through quantum dots with phonon-assisted spin-flip processes
• Interactions in Electronic Mach-Zehnder Interferometers with Copropagating Edge Channels
• Spin-dependent shot noise enhancement in a quantum dot