Probing charge- and heat-current noise by frequency-dependent fluctuations in temperature and potential

Journal article, 2018

The energetic properties of electron transport in mesoscopic and nanoscale conductors are of considerable interest at present. Here, we theoretically investigate the possibility of probing charge- and heat-current fluctuations as well as their mixed correlations via the temperature and electrochemical potential fluctuations of a probe coupled to the conductor. Our particular interest is devoted to the charge and energy noise stemming from time-dependently-driven nanoelectronic systems designed for the controlled emission of single electrons, even though our setup is appropriate for more general ac-driving schemes. We employ a Boltzmann-Langevin approach in order to relate the bare charge- and energy-current fluctuations emitted from the electron source to frequency-dependent electrochemical potential and temperature fluctuations, which the former induce in the probe. We apply our findings to the prominent example of an on-demand single-electron source, realized by a driven mesoscopic capacitor in the quantum Hall regime. We show that neither the background fluctuations of the probe in the absence of the working source, nor the fluctuations induced by the probe hinder the access to the sought-after direct source noise for a large range of parameters.