English

Full Counting Statistics of a charge shuttle

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2009-11-10 v2

Abstract

We study the charge transfer in a small grain oscillating between two leads. Coulomb blockade restricts the charge fluctuations in such a way that only zero or one additional electrons can sit on the grain. The system thus acts as a charge shuttle. We obtain the full counting statistics of charge transfer and discuss its behavior. For large oscillation amplitude the probability of transferring n~\tilde n electrons per cycle is strongly peaked around one. The peak is asymmetric since its form is controlled by different parameters for n~>1\tilde n>1 and n~<1\tilde n < 1. Under certain conditions the systems behaves as if the effective charge is 1/2 of the elementary one. Knowledge of the counting statistics gives a new insight on the mechanism of charge transfer.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0401361,
  title  = {Full Counting Statistics of a charge shuttle},
  author = {F. Pistolesi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0401361},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

8 pages, 6 figures. Minor revisions. Phys. Rev. B (in press)

R2 v1 2026-07-22T10:58:56.184Z