How spin-orbit interaction can cause electronic shot noise

We use the open kicked rotator to model the chaotic scattering in a ballistic quantum dot coupled by two point contacts to electron reservoirs. By calculating the system-size-over-wave-length dependence of the shot noise power we study the crossover from wave to particle dynamics. Both a fully quantum mechanical and a semiclassical calculation are presented. We find numerically in both approaches that the noise power is reduced exponentially with the ratio of Ehrenfest time a...

We investigate the effect of dephasing/decoherence on quantum transport through open chaotic ballistic conductors in the semiclassical limit of small Fermi wavelength to system size ratio, $\lambda_F/L << 1$. We use the trajectory-based semiclassical theory to study a two-terminal chaotic dot with decoherence originating from: (i) an external closed quantum chaotic environment, (ii) a classical source of noise, (iii) a voltage probe, i.e. an additional current-conservin...

The coupling of orbital and spin degrees of freedom is the source of many interesting phenomena. Here, we study the electron dynamics in a quantum billiard --a mesoscopic rectangular quantum dot-- with spin-orbit coupling driven by a periodic electric field. We find that both the spatial and temporal profiles of the observables demonstrate the transition to chaotic dynamics with qualitative modifications of the power spectra and patterns of probability and spin density. The t...

We study charge transport through a chain of quantum dots. The dots are fully coherent among each other and weakly coupled to metallic electrodes via the dots at the interface, thus modelling a molecular wire. If the non-local Coulomb interactions dominate over the inter-dot hopping we find strongly enhanced shot noise above the sequential tunneling threshold. The current is not enhanced in the region of enhanced noise, thus rendering the noise super-Poissonian. In contrast t...

Quantum dots are small conducting devices containing up to several thousand electrons. We focus here on closed dots whose single-electron dynamics are mostly chaotic. The mesoscopic fluctuations of the conduction properties of such dots reveal the effects of one-body chaos, quantum coherence and electron-electron interactions.

We present a detailed theoretical investigation of the effect of Coulomb interactions on electron transport through quantum dots and double barrier structures connected to a voltage source via an arbitrary linear impedance. Combining real time path integral techniques with the scattering matrix approach we derive the effective action and evaluate the current-voltage characteristics of quantum dots at sufficiently large conductances. Our analysis reveals a reach variety of dif...

Shot noise of series quantum point contacts forming a sequence of cavities in a two dimensional electron gas are studied theoretically and experimentally. Noise in such a structure originates from local scattering at the point contacts as well as from chaotic motion of the electrons in the cavities. We found that the measured shot noise is in reasonable agreement with our theoretical prediction taking the cavity noise into account.

Shot noise in a chaotic cavity (Lyapunov exponent $\lambda$, level spacing $\delta$, linear dimension $L$), coupled by two $N$-mode point contacts to electron reservoirs, is studied as a measure of the crossover from stochastic quantum transport to deterministic classical transport. The transition proceeds through the formation of {\em fully} transmitted or reflected scattering states, which we construct explicitly. The fully transmitted states contribute to the mean current ...

We develop a theoretical description of transport through quantum dots connected to reservoirs via spin-polarized ballistic contacts. Rate equations account for spin accumulation inside the dot, electron-electron interactions, and stochastic fluctuations. It is shown that both the ac response (admittance) and the frequency-dependent shot noise are governed by spin-flip scattering, which can be used to detect spin polarization and spin-flip processes in the dot.

As devices to control spin currents using the spin-orbit interaction are proposed and implemented, it is important to understand the fluctuations that spin-orbit coupling can impose on transmission through a quantum dot. Using random matrix theory, we estimate the typical scale of transmitted charge and spin currents when a spin current is injected into a chaotic quantum dot with strong spin-orbit coupling. These results have implications for the functioning of the spin trans...