Noise characterization of a single parameter quantized charge pump

Abstract

The shot noise of a single parameter quantized charge pump is studied. The pumped current can be varied using a control gate. Quantized current plateaus / = nefp with fp the pumping frequency and e the electron charge are observed. The shot noise is minimal for each current plateau and maximal in between. Interestingly the first expected quantized current plateau at n = 1 is missing for certain control gate voltages. We use the measured shot noise to extract the probabilities for pumping none, one or two electrons at the position of the missing step. These probabilities can be used to characterize the dynamics of the non-adiabatic pumping process. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.