Single particle sources and quantum heat fluctuations

Abstract

The miniaturisation of electronic devices has been a well-known trend in engineering over almost 50 years. The technological advancement in the field can now provide an astonishing control of charge transport in mesoscopic structures. Single particle pumping, namely the control in time and space of the flow of an arbitrarily small number of electrons or holes, has been realised in various kind of structure with, in some cases, very high accuracies. The first half of the manuscript provides a brief overview of different experimental realisations of single particle sources. Though these devices allow to minimise charge fluctuations in the charge current, because of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the emitted particles are characterised by energy fluctuations. The consequences of it are of great relevance and presented in the second part of the paper.

Keywords:

• single particle sources
• quantised current
• quantum heat fluctuations

Acknowledgements

I acquired the majority of the knowledge about single particle sources and heat fluctuations, presented here, over my PhD studies under the supervision of Peter Samuelsson who I thank also for feedback on a previous version of this manuscript. I thank Liliana Arrachea for reading it. I acknowledge funding by the Excellence Initiative of the German Federal and State Governments and the hospitality of RWTH-Aachen and Universidad de Buenos Aires where this manuscript was partially written.