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Doctoral thesis
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English

Dynamic mesoscopic conductors: single electron sources, full counting statistics, and thermal machines

ContributorsHofer, Patrick
Defense date2016-10-21
Abstract

We theoretically investigate questions regarding the controlled emission and entanglement of individual electrons in mesoscopic circuits, the statistics of current fluctuations and electron waiting times for phase-coherent quantum transport, and thermal machines such as heat engines and refrigerators at the nano-scale. Chapter 2 focuses on dynamic single-electron sources, specifically on the generation of ac spin currents in topological insulators, Mach-Zehnder interferometry with periodic voltage pulses, and the on-demand entanglement of few-electron excitations. In Chapter 3, we present a novel theory for joint electron waiting times and we connect the occurence of negative values in the full counting statistics to a peculiar interference effect. Chapter 4 discusses a heat engine based on the interference in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer as well as implementations for the arguably smallest thermal machines making use of a Josephson junction coupled to harmonic oscillators.

eng
Keywords
  • Quantum Transport
  • Floquet Scattering Theory
  • Full Counting Statistics
  • Single Electron Sources
  • Quantum Thermodynamics
Citation (ISO format)
HOFER, Patrick. Dynamic mesoscopic conductors: single electron sources, full counting statistics, and thermal machines. 2016. doi: 10.13097/archive-ouverte/unige:88977
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Creation11/11/2016 3:39:00 PM
First validation11/11/2016 3:39:00 PM
Update time03/15/2023 12:55:56 AM
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