No Arabic abstract
The current noise density S of a conductor in equilibrium, the Johnson noise, is determined by its temperature T: S=4kTG with G the conductance. The samples noise temperature Tn=S/(4kG) generalizes T for a system out of equilibrium. We introduce the noise thermal impedance of a sample as the amplitude of the oscillation of Tn when heated by an oscillating power. For a macroscopic sample, it is the usual thermal impedance. We show for a diffusive wire how this (complex) frequency-dependent quantity gives access to the electron-phonon interaction time in a long wire and to the diffusion time in a shorter one, and how its real part may also give access to the electron-electron inelastic time. These times are not simply accessible from the frequency dependence of S itself.
We investigate diffusive nanowire-based structures with two normal terminals on the sides and a central superconducting island in the middle, which is either grounded or floating. Using a semiclassical calculation we demonstrate that both device layouts permit a quantitative measurement of the energy-dependent sub-gap thermal conductance $G_mathrm{th}$ from the spectral density of the current noise. In the floating case this goal is achieved without the need to contact the superconductor provided the device is asymmetric, that may be attractive from the experimental point of view. In addition, we observe that the shot noise in the floating case is sensitive to a well-known effect of non-equilibrium suppression and bistability of the superconducting gap. Our calculations are directly applicable to the multi-mode case and can serve as a starting point to understand the shot noise response in open one dimensional Majorana device.
The control and measurement of local non-equilibrium configurations is of utmost importance in applications on energy harvesting, thermoelectrics and heat management in nano-electronics. This challenging task can be achieved with the help of various local probes, prominent examples including superconducting or quantum dot based tunnel junctions, classical and quantum resistors, and Raman thermography. Beyond time-averaged properties, valuable information can also be gained from spontaneous fluctuations of current (noise). From these perspective, however, a fundamental constraint is set by current conservation, which makes noise a characteristic of the whole conductor, rather than some part of it. Here we demonstrate how to remove this obstacle and pick up a local noise temperature of a current biased diffusive conductor with the help of a miniature noise probe. This approach is virtually noninvasive and extends primary local measurements towards strongly non-equilibrium regimes.
We present a numerical study of dephasing of electron spin ensembles in a diffusive quasi-one-dimensional GaAs wire due to the Dyakonov-Perel spin-dephasing mechanism. For widths of the wire below the spin precession length and for equal strength of Rashba and linear Dresselhaus spin-orbit fields a strong suppression of spin-dephasing is found. This suppression of spin-dephasing shows a strong dependence on the wire orientation with respect to the crystal lattice. The relevance for realistic cases is evaluated by studying how this effect degrades for deviating strength of Rashba and linear Dresselhaus fields, and with the inclusion of the cubic Dresselhaus term.
Using the phonon Boltzmann transport formalism and density functional theory based calculations, we show that stanene has a low thermal conductivity. For a sample size of 1$times$1 $mu$m$^{2}$ ($Ltimes W$), the lattice thermal conductivities along the zigzag and armchair directions are 10.83 W/m-K and 9.2 W/m-K respectively, at room temperature, indicating anisotropy in the thermal transport. The low values of thermal conductivity are due to large anharmonicity in the crystal resulting in high Gr{u}neisen parameters, and low group velocities. The room temperature effective phonon mean free path is found to be around 17 nm indicating that the thermal transport in stanene is completely diffusive in nature. Furthermore, our study brings out the relative importance of the contributing phonon branches and reveals that, at very low temperatures, the contribution to lattice thermal conductivity comes from the flexural acoustic (ZA) branch and at higher temperatures it is dominated by the longitudinal acoustic (LA) branch. We also show that lattice thermal conductivity of stanene can further be reduced by tuning the sample size and creating rough surfaces at the edges. Such tunability in the lattice thermal conductivity in stanene suggests its applications in thermoelectric devices.
The demand for a fast high-frequency read-out of high impedance devices, such as quantum dots, necessitates impedance matching. Here we use a resonant impedance matching circuit (a stub tuner) realized by on-chip superconducting transmission lines to measure the electronic shot noise of a carbon nanotube quantum dot at a frequency close to 3 GHz in an efficient way. As compared to wide-band detection without impedance matching, the signal to noise ratio can be enhanced by as much as a factor of 800 for a device with an impedance of 100 k$Omega$. The advantage of the stub resonator concept is the ease with which the response of the circuit can be predicted, designed and fabricated. We further demonstrate that all relevant matching circuit parameters can reliably be deduced from power reflectance measurements and then used to predict the power transmission function from the device through the circuit. The shot noise of the carbon nanotube quantum dot in the Coulomb blockade regime shows an oscillating suppression below the Schottky value of $2eI$, as well an enhancement in specific regions.