Non-classical current noise and light emission of an ac-driven tunnel junction

Year: 2020

Authors: Zhan H., Rastelli G., Belzig W.

Autors Affiliation: Univ Konstanz, Fachbereich Phys, D-78457 Constance, Germany

Abstract: The nonsymmetrized current noise is crucial for the analysis of light emission in nanojunctions. The latter represent non-classical photon emitters whose description requires a full quantum approach. It was found experimentally that light emission can occur with a photon energy exceeding the applied dc voltage, which intuitively should be forbidden due to the Pauli principle. This overbias light emission cannot be described by the single-electron physics, but can be explained by two-electron or even three-electron processes, correlated by a local resonant mode in analogy to the well-known dynamical Coulomb blockade (DCB). Here, we obtain the nonsymmetrized noise for junctions driven by an arbitrarily shaped periodic voltage. We find that when the junction is driven, the overbias light emission exhibits intriguingly different features compared to the dc case. In addition to kinks at multiples of the bias voltage, side kinks appear at integer multiples of the ac driving frequency. Our work generalizes the DCB theory of light emission to driven tunnel junctions and opens the avenue for engineered quantum light sources, which can be tuned purely by applied voltages.

Journal/Review: NEW JOURNAL OF PHYSICS

Volume: 22 (5)      Pages from: 053035  to:

More Information: We gratefully acknowledge the support from DFG through SFB 767 and the Zukunftskolleg of the University of Konstanz.
KeyWords: light-matter interaction, mesoscopic physics, quantum shot noise
DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/ab83d8