Drastic Reduction of Shot Noise in Semiconductor Superlattices

Abstract

We have found experimentally that the shot noise of the tunneling current $I$ through an undoped semiconductor superlattice is reduced with respect to the Poissonian noise value $2eI$, and that the noise approaches 1/3 of that value in superlattices whose quantum wells are strongly coupled. On the other hand, when the coupling is weak or when a strong electric field is applied to the superlattice the noise becomes Poissonian. Although our results are qualitatively consistent with existing theories for one-dimensional mulitple barriers, the theories cannot account for the dependence of the noise on superlattice parameters that we have observed.

arXiv comment4 Pages, 3Figures

References in corpus (5)

• Shot Noise in Mesoscopic Conductors
• Enhanced shot noise in resonant tunneling: theory and experiment
• The 1/3-shot noise suppression in diffusive nanowires
• Semiclassical theory of shot-noise suppression
• Shot Noise Enhancement in Resonant Tunneling Structures in a Magnetic Field

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Quantum analysis of shot noise suppression in a series of tunnel barriers
• Is the regime with shot noise suppression by a factor 1/3 achievable in semiconductor devices with mesoscopic dimensions?
• Quasiparticle transport in arrays of chaotic cavities