We evaluate a typical value of higher order cumulants (irreducible moments) of conductance fluctuations that could be extracted from magneto-conductance measurements in a single sample when an external magnetic field is swept over an interval B0. We find that the n-th cumulant has a sample-dependent random part ±\gN2n/2anBc/B0, where \gN2 is the variance of conductance fluctuations, Bc is a correlation field, and an∼n!. This means that an apparent deviation of the conductance distribution from a Gaussian shape, manifested by non-vanishing higher cumulants, can be a spurious result of correlations of conductances at different values of the magnetic field.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0306613,
title = {On the Applicability of the Ergodicity Hypothesis to Mesoscopic Fluctuations},
author = {O. Tsyplyatyev and I. L. Aleiner and Vladimir I. Fal'ko and Igor V. Lerner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0306613},
year = {2009}
}