English

Statistics of temperature fluctuations in an electron system out of equilibrium

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2013-04-04 v1 Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

We study the statistics of the fluctuating electron temperature in a metallic island coupled to reservoirs via resistive contacts and driven out of equilibrium by either a temperature or voltage difference between the reservoirs. The fluctuations of temperature are well-defined provided that the energy relaxation rate inside the island exceeds the rate of energy exchange with the reservoirs. We quantify these fluctuations in the regime beyond the Gaussian approximation and elucidate their dependence on the nature of the electronic contacts.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0812.1142,
  title  = {Statistics of temperature fluctuations in an electron system out of equilibrium},
  author = {Tero T. Heikkila and Yuli Nazarov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0812.1142},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

4 pages, 3 figures