Inelastic Current Noise in Nanoscale Systems: Scattering Theory Analysis

Abstract

We present a scattering theory description for the inelastic current noise in the presence of electron-vibration interactions. In this description, we specify elastic and inelastic scattering contributions to the shot noise by examining charge transfers between scattering states and energy exchange between electrons and vibrations. The elastic and inelastic scattering processes are further decomposed into current correlations of electrons at the same energy and those of electrons at different energies. Focusing on the inelastic noise signals defined as steps in the voltage derivative of the shot noise, we show that single-channel systems have two ranges of transmission at which the inelastic noise signals exhibit the crossover between positive and negative signs. In a high transmission regime, even and odd vibrational modes of mirror-symmetric systems provide upper and lower bounds to the ratio of the inelastic noise signal to the conductance step. This can be a theoretical justification for models used to understand the recent noise experiment [Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 146602 (2012)] and numerical calculations on gold atomic chains [Phys. Rev. B 86, 155411 (2012)].

14 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (16)

• Inelastic transport theory from first-principles: methodology and applications for nanoscale devices
• Inelastic scattering and local heating in atomic gold wires
• Modeling inelastic phonon scattering in atomic- and molecular-wire junctions
• Unified description of inelastic propensity rules for electron transport through nanoscale junctions
• Electron-vibration interaction in single-molecule junctions: from contact to tunneling regime
• Phonon-assisted current noise in molecular junctions
• Electron-phonon interaction and full counting statistics in molecular junctions
• Vibrationally Induced Two-Level Systems in Single-Molecule Junctions
• Vibration-induced correction to the current through a single molecule
• Charge transfer statistics of a molecular quantum dot with a vibrational degree of freedom
• Nonlinear effects of phonon fluctuations on transport through nanoscale junctions
• From tunneling to contact: Inelastic signals in an atomic gold junction
• Current noise in molecular junctions: effects of the electron-phonon interaction
• Inelastic shot noise characteristics of nanoscale junctions from first principles
• First Principles Quantum Transport with Electron-vibration Interactions: A Maximally Localized Wannier Function Approach
• Scattering Theory Approach to Inelastic Transport in Nanoscale Systems

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Green's function methods for single molecule junctions
• Thermodynamic uncertainty relation in atomic-scale quantum conductors
• Build-up of Vibron-Mediated Electron Correlations in Molecular Junctions
• Influence of electron-vibration interactions on electronic current noise of atomic and molecular junctions