We point out the similarities in the definition of the "fidelity" of a quantum system and the generating function determining the full counting statistics of charge transport through a quantum wire and suggest to use flux or charge qubits for their measurement. As an application we use the notion of fidelity within a first-quantized formalism in order to derive new results and insights on the generating function of the full counting statistics.
We point out the similarities in the definition of the "fidelity" of a quantum system and the generating function determining the full counting statistics of charge transport through a quantum wire and suggest to use flux or charge qubits for their measurement. As an application we use the notion of fidelity within a first-quantized formalism in order to derive new results and insights on the generating function of the full counting statistics.
Traditionally, (charge) transport phenomena describe the average current flow in response to a constant applied driving force. Additional information is provided by current-current correlations or noise, telling about the granularity, the statistical properties, and the interactions between the particles. The complete characterization of transport is given by the full counting statistics, quantifying the probability that n particles pass the device during a time window t. The desire for a complete characterization of transport in a mesoscopic device goes together with the development of new single-particle sources and the availability of quantum bits as measurement devices. In this thesis, we will describe how to combine these three elements, full counting statistics, single-particle sources, and qubit measurement devices and how these concepts relate to the description of charge transport of noninteracting electrons in a mesoscopic device. In the work on full counting statistics, we develop a new wave-packet formalism that provides access to an entire class of interesting results. The wavepacket formalism is derived from an insight regarding the equivalence between the fidelity of a quantum system and the generating function of full counting statistics; furthermore, we show how qubits can be used to measure both quantities, fidelity and full counting statistics, exploiting the induced ‘decoherence’ as a signal; thereby, we transfer the measurement of the fidelity and of the full counting statistics from the realm of a ‘Gedanken’ experiment to a practical proposal realizable with today’s qubit technology. Subsequently, we study the full counting statistics for the transmission of two identical particles with positive or negative symmetry under exchange, for the situation where the scattering depends on energy. We make use of our firstquantized wave-packet formalism and find interesting results. While it is expected that the noise as well as higher-order correlators will be sensitive to the exchange symmetry, we find the astounding result that exchange can hugely enhance (or suppress) the average charge already. The effect is a consequence of the symmetry-induced reshuffling of weight in the momentum distribution of the
The complete characterization of the charge transport in a mesoscopic device is provided by the full counting statistics (FCS) Pt(m), describing the amount of charge Q=me transmitted during the time t. Although numerous systems have been theoretically characterized by their FCS, the experimental measurement of the distribution function Pt(m) or its moments $\ensuremath{\langle}{Q}^{n}\ensuremath{\rangle}$ is rare and often plagued by strong back-action. Here, we present a strategy for the measurement of the FCS, more specifically its characteristic function $\ensuremath{\chi}(\ensuremath{\lambda})$ and moments $\ensuremath{\langle}{Q}^{n}\ensuremath{\rangle}$, by a qubit with a set of different couplings ${\ensuremath{\lambda}}_{j}$, $j=1,\ensuremath{\cdots},k,\ensuremath{\cdots}k+p$, $k=\ensuremath{\lceil}n/2\ensuremath{\rceil}$, $p\ensuremath{\ge}0$, to the mesoscopic conductor. The scheme involves multiple readings of Ramsey sequences at the different coupling strengths ${\ensuremath{\lambda}}_{j}$, and we find the optimal distribution for these couplings ${\ensuremath{\lambda}}_{j}$ as well as the optimal distribution Nj of $N=\ensuremath{\sum}{N}_{j}$ measurements among the different couplings ${\ensuremath{\lambda}}_{j}$. We determine the precision scaling for the moments $\ensuremath{\langle}{Q}^{n}\ensuremath{\rangle}$ with the number N of invested resources and show that the standard quantum limit can be approached when many additional couplings $p\ensuremath{\gg}1$ are included in the measurement scheme.
Entanglement entropy is a measure of quantum correlations between separate parts of a many‐body system, which plays an important role in many areas of physics. Here we review recent work in which a relation between this quantity and the Full Counting Statistics description of electron transport was established for noninteracting fermion systems. Using this relation, which is of a completely general character, we discuss how the entanglement entropy can be directly measured by detecting current fluctuations in a driven quantum system such as quantum point contact.
The study of electrical currents in a regime where a description as a continuous flow fails and the particle nature becomes important, but where notions such as particle density or currents continue to be meaningful, will be at the heart of the present dissertation. Given such a mesoscopic system through which electrons flow, either actively through quantum pumping or passively due to a potential difference, we investigate quantities such as transferred charge, noise, current fluctuations, and relations between them. More generally we shall examine the statistics of particle transport. All discussions will concentrate on compact devices transferring charge between two one-dimensional reservoirs (the leads) of independent electrons. Firstly, we consider the generating function of the moments of transferred charge and we prove that it is given by the determinant of a single-particle operator. It is formally equivalent to a formula of Lesovik and Levitov, but is shown to be well-defined in the situations under consideration, whereas the former is not, in general. The mechanism leading to regularization is typical for mesoscopic systems: we consider a limiting case that reveals the fundamental structure of the problem. In fact, as suited for an open system, the leads contain an infinite number of charges. It follows mathematically that the second quantization ought to be carried out upon the Fermi sea and not upon the vacuum, a procedure known as the GNS construction. We shall rely heavily on operator algebraic techniques. The set of observables, the C*-algebra of canonical anticommutation relations, admits different representations for systems in the thermodynamic limit, which are described by their reduced one-particle density matrix. An important question will be the existence of operators such as the charge or the time evolution in a given representation, which induce so-called Bogoliubov transformations. These prerequisites at hand, we shall pose the problem of counting statistics clearly, prove that the regularized determinant emerges naturally, and show that it describes the transport of integer charges with non-negative probabilities. Secondly, we introduce a model of instantaneous scattering in which various examples can be computed explicitely. In particular, we show that the above theorem applies for scattering through a smoothly operating pump over a finite time interval. We also exhibit situations where the propagator does exist but the generating function is ambiguous. In a more computational approach, we then turn to the relation of individual moments of transferred charge to current correlators. It turns out that the former can indeed be expressed as integrals of the latter over time, provided the current operators are ordered according to Matthews’ T∗ ordering. It is given by first arranging the charge operators according to their time indices, and only then taking the time derivatives, which induce contact terms whose singular support lies along time coincidences. We shall give two derivations of this result, because the first one is transparent, and the second one is related to contradictory computations in the literature where the system is considered to be measured by an external spin. In the model of constant instantaneous scattering, we then argue from the Lesovik-Levitov determinant that the transport can be interpreted in terms of a binomial process in the long time limit. In a parallel computation, we concentrate on the third cumulant as defined by integration of current correlators and show how the contact terms of the T∗ ordering play an essential role in providing the expected binomial result, too. To close this thesis, we suggest an algebraic framework that lays the foundations for a rigorous discussion of the Casimir effect. The problem of infinites arising in the comparison of two physical situations for a bosonic field is interpreted as the non-equivalence of states on the algebra of canonical commutation relations. We exhibit sufficient conditions on the one-particle Hamiltonians which ensure that the Casimir energy is finite and give an expression for it. We discuss its formal equivalence with the result obtained from the standard mode summing method.
We revisit fidelity as a measure for the stability and the complexity of the quantum motion of single-and many-body systems. Within the context of cold atoms, we present an overview of applications of two fidelities, which we call static and dynamical fidelity, respectively. The static fidelity applies to quantum problems which can be diagonalized since it is defined via the eigenfunctions. In particular, we show that the static fidelity is a highly effective practical detector of avoided crossings characterizing the complexity of the systems and their evolutions. The dynamical fidelity is defined via the time-dependent wave functions. Focusing on the quantum kicked rotor system, we highlight a few practical applications of fidelity measurements in order to better understand the large variety of dynamical regimes of this paradigm of a low-dimensional system with mixed regular-chaotic phase space.