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arXiv:1402.5033 · Physical Review B

Waiting time distributions of noninteracting fermions on a tight-binding chain

Konrad H. Thomas, Christian Flindt

Published Jun 13, 2014• 33 citations
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Abstract

We consider the distribution of waiting times between noninteracting fermions on a tight-binding chain. We calculate the waiting time distribution for a quantum point contact and find a crossover from Wigner-Dyson statistics at full transmission to Poisson statistics close to pinch-off as predicted by scattering theory. In addition, we consider several quantum dot structures for which we can associate oscillations in the waiting time distributions with internal energy scales of the scatterers. A detailed comparison with scattering theory and generalized master equations is provided. We focus on mesoscopic conductors, but our tight-binding models may also be realized in cold-atomic gases.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.89.245420

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We consider the distribution of waiting times between noninteracting fermions on a tight-binding chain. We calculate the waiting time distribution for a quantum point contact and find a crossover from Wigner-Dyson statistics at full transmission to Poisson statistics close to pinch-off as predicted by scattering theory. In addition, we consider several quantum dot structures for which we can associate oscillations in the waiting time distributions with internal energy scales of the scatterers. A detailed comparison with scattering theory and generalized master equations is provided. We focus on mesoscopic conductors, but our tight-binding models may also be realized in cold-atomic gases.
The distribution of electron waiting times is useful to characterize quantum transport in mesoscopic structures. Here we consider a generic quantum-coherent conductor consisting of a mesoscopic scatterer in a two-terminal setup. We extend earlier results for single-channel conductors to setups with several (possibly spin degenerate) conduction channels and we discuss the effect of a finite electronic temperature. We present detailed investigations of the electron waiting times in a quantum point contact as well as in two mesoscopic interferometers with energy-dependent transmissions: a Fabry--P\'erot interferometer and a Mach--Zehnder interferometer. We show that the waiting time distributions allow us to determine characteristic features of the scatterers, for instance, the number of resonant levels in the Fabry--P\'erot interferometer that contribute to the electronic transport.
We consider a sequence of quantized Lorentzian pulses of noninteracting electrons impinging on a quantum point contact and study the waiting time distribution (WTD), for any transmission and any number of pulses. As the degree of overlap between the electronic wave functions is tuned, the WTD reveals how the correlations between particles are modified. In the weak overlap regime, the WTD is made of several equidistant peaks, separated by the same period as the incoming pulses, contained in an almost exponentially decaying envelope. In the other limit, the WTD of a single quantum channel subjected to a constant voltage is recovered. In both cases, the WTD stresses the difference between the fluctuations induced by the scatterer and the ones encoded in the incoming quantum state. A clear crossover between these two situations is studied with numerical and analytical calculations based on scattering theory.
We formulate a quantum theory of electron waiting time distributions for charge transport in nanostructures described by non-Markovian generalized master equations. We illustrate our method by calculating the waiting time distribution of electron transport through a dissipative double quantum dot, where memory effects are present due to a strongly coupled heat bath. We consider the influence of non-Markovian dephasing on the distribution of electron waiting times and discuss how spectral properties of the heat bath may be detected through measurements of the electron waiting time.
Exact numerical results for the full counting statistics (FCS) for a one-dimensional tight-binding model of noninteracting electrons are presented without using an idealized measuring device. The two initially separate subsystems are connected at t=0t=0t=0 and the exact time evolution for the large but finite combined system is obtained numerically via a finite dimensional determinant. Even for surprisingly short times the approximate description of the time evolution with the help of scattering states agrees well with the exact result for the local current matrix elements and the FCS. An additional approximation has to be made to recover the Levitov-Lesovik formula in the limit where the system size becomes infinite and afterwards the long time limit is addressed. The derivation of the Levitov-Lesovik formula is generalized to more general geometries such as a Y junction enclosing a magnetic flux.
We present an exact expression for the entanglement entropy generated at a quantum point contact between noninteracting electronic leads in terms of the full counting statistics of charge fluctuations, which we illustrate with examples from both equilibrium and nonequilibrium transport. The formula is also applicable to ground-state entanglement entropy in systems described by noninteracting fermions in any dimension, which in one dimension include the critical spin-1/2 XX\mathit{XX}XX and Ising models where conformal field theory predictions for the entanglement entropy are reproduced from the full counting statistics. These results may play an important role in experimental measurements of entanglement entropy in mesoscopic structures and cold atoms in optical lattices.