English

Current noise from a magnetic moment in a helical edge

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2017-03-15 v2

Abstract

We calculate the two-terminal current noise generated by a magnetic moment coupled to a helical edge of a two-dimensional topological insulator. When the system is symmetric with respect to in-plane spin rotation, the noise is dominated by the Nyquist component even in the presence of a voltage bias VV. The corresponding noise spectrum S(V,ω)S(V,\omega) is determined by a modified fluctuation-dissipation theorem with the differential conductance G(V,ω)G(V,\omega) in place of the linear one. The differential noise S/V\partial S/ \partial V, commonly measured in experiments, is strongly dependent on frequency on a small scale τK1T\tau_{K}^{-1}\ll T set by the Korringa relaxation rate of the local moment. This is in stark contrast with the case of conventional mesoscopic conductors where S/V\partial S/ \partial V is frequency-independent and defined by the shot noise. In a helical edge, a violation of the spin-rotation symmetry leads to the shot noise, which becomes important only at a high bias. Uncharacteristically for a fermion system, this noise in the backscattered current is super-Poissonian.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1609.03564,
  title  = {Current noise from a magnetic moment in a helical edge},
  author = {Jukka I. Väyrynen and Leonid I. Glazman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.03564},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

Improved presentation and added references, now 6+3 pages, 2 figures