Probing Pauli blocking with shot noise in resonant tunneling diodes: Experiment and theory

Abstract

The Pauli exclusion principle is one of the fundamental tenets of quantum mechanics and determines the structure of matter at the atomic and molecular levels. Here, we show that Pauli blocking, a consequence of the exclusion principle according to which electron transitions are inhibited if the arrival state is occupied by another electron, has an observable effect on shot noise in resonant tunnel diodes. We measure a double valley feature in the plot of the noise suppression factor (the "Fano" factor) as a function of the applied voltage, which has been theoretically predicted a few years ago but has never benn observed, and which suggests that Pauli blocking must be considered in the evaluation of transport in mesoscopic and nanoelectronic devices

Improvement of the accuracy of noise measurements by the two-amplifier correlation method

“…Furthermore, with cryogenic cooling at a temperature of about 6 K of the feedback resistors, we have been able, with the usage of the series configuration, to reliably measure the shot noise of resonant tunneling diodes associated with a current down to a fraction of a picoampere. 14…”

“…The total contribution V V oj from the voltage noise sources, from Eqs. (14) and (17), can thus be written…”

Shot noise suppression inp−njunctions due to carrier generation-recombination

“…One of the early studied shot noise suppression effects in nanostructures is that observed in double-barrier resonant tunneling devices (DBRTDs), where, in the positive differential resistance region, a Fano factor (ratio of the noise power spectral density to that predicted by Schottky's theorem) down to 1/2 was observed by Li et al, 3 and which is due to an interplay between Pauli and Coulomb correlations. [4][5][6][7] In the negative differential resistance region, instead, a shot noise enhancement was observed 8 due to positive correlations among charge carriers resulting from the quantum well electrostatics.…”

Tunneling mechanism in a (Ga,Mn)As/GaAs-based spin Esaki diode investigated by bias-dependent shot noise measurements

“…A theoretical work predicted a universal case F = 3/4 when LSs are randomly distributed around the center of a tunnel barrier [9]. As this ideal situation is not easy to achieve experimentally, F usually * arakawa@phys.sci.osaka-u.ac.jp ranges from 1/2 to 1 depending on the symmetry of the coupling to both leads and the Coulomb interaction [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. In addition, F > 1 was reported for the case of strong Coulomb interaction [17,18], and F < 1/2 s observed in the presence of leaky barriers [19,20].…”