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Dynamical Coulomb Blockade as a Local Probe for Quantum Transport
Jacob Senkpiel1, Jan C Klöckner2,3, Markus Etzkorn1
1Max-Planck-Institut für Festkörperforschung, Heisenbergstraße 1, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany.
Physical Review Letters
|May 2, 2020
Summary
Dynamical Coulomb blockade (DCB) in scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) probes quantum fluctuations. This method reveals conduction channel information, complementing shot noise measurements for quantum transport analysis.
Area of Science:
- Quantum transport phenomena
- Mesoscopic physics
- Surface science
Background:
- Quantum fluctuations contain vital information about charge transport.
- Experimental measurement of these fluctuations is often challenging.
- Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) offers potential for local probing.
Purpose of the Study:
- Introduce dynamical Coulomb blockade (DCB) as a local probe for quantum fluctuations using STM.
- Investigate the relationship between DCB and conduction channel properties.
- Compare DCB measurements with theoretical predictions and other transport techniques.
Main Methods:
- Utilized scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) to implement dynamical Coulomb blockade (DCB) measurements.
- Performed local probing of quantum fluctuations at the atomic scale.
- Complemented experimental results with ab initio transport calculations.
Main Results:
- Demonstrated that DCB provides information about conduction channels in atomic-scale contacts.
- Observed DCB disappearance in single-channel junctions, consistent with Fano factor predictions.
- Showcased the ability of DCB to detect local variations in conduction channel configurations.
Conclusions:
- Dynamical Coulomb blockade (DCB) is an effective local probe for quantum fluctuations in STM.
- DCB measurements offer insights into conduction channel characteristics, analogous to shot noise.
- Probing DCB with STM presents a complementary technique for resolving quantum transport properties.
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