Eur. Phys. J. B 83, 349-356 (2011)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2011-20369-5

Regular Article

Influence of a random telegraph process on the transport through a point contact

¹ Theoretische Physik, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland
² L.D. Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics RAS, 117940 Moscow, Russia

^a e-mail: hassler@itp.phys.ethz.ch

Received: 14 May 2011
Received in final form: 8 August 2011
Published online: 10 October 2011

Abstract

We describe the transport properties of a point contact under the influence of a classical two-level fluctuator. We employ a transfer matrix formalism allowing us to calculate arbitrary correlation functions of the stochastic process by mapping them on matrix products. The result is used to obtain the generating function of the full counting statistics of a classical point contact subject to a classical fluctuator, including extensions to a pair of two-level fluctuators as well as to a quantum point contact. We show that the noise in the quantum point contact is a sum of the (quantum) partitioning noise and the (classical) noise due to the two-level fluctuator. As a side result, we obtain the full counting statistics of a quantum point contact with time-dependent transmission probabilities.