Adrien Mahé

An On-Demand Coherent Single Electron Source

We report on the electron analog of the single-photon gun. On-demand single-electron injection in a quantum conductor was obtained using a quantum dot connected to the conductor via a tunnel barrier. Electron emission was triggered by the application of a potential step that compensated for the dot-charging energy. Depending on the barrier transparency, the quantum emission time ranged from 0.1 to 10 nanoseconds. The single-electron source should prove useful for the use of quantum bits in ballistic conductors. Additionally, periodic sequences of single-electron emission and absorption generate a quantized alternating current.

Subnanosecond Single Electron Source in the Time-Domain

We describe here the realization of a single electron source similar to single photon sources in optics. On-demand single electron injection is obtained using a quantum dot connected to the conductor via a tunnel barrier of variable transmission (quantum point contact). Electron emission is triggered by a sudden change of the dot potential which brings a single energy level above the Fermi energy in the conductor. A single charge is emitted on an average time ranging from 100 ps to 10 ns ultimately determined by the barrier transparency and the dot charging energy. The average single electron emission process is recorded with a 0.5 ns time resolution using a real-time fast acquisition card. Single electron signals are compared to simulation based on scattering theory approach adapted for finite excitation energies.

A high sensitivity ultralow temperature RF conductance and noise measurement setup.

We report on the realization of a high sensitivity RF noise measurement scheme to study small current fluctuations of mesoscopic systems at milli-Kelvin temperatures. The setup relies on the combination of an interferometric amplification scheme and a quarter-wave impedance transformer, allowing the measurement of noise power spectral densities with gigahertz bandwidth up to five orders of magnitude below the amplifier noise floor. We simultaneously measure the high frequency conductance of the sample by derivating a portion of the signal to a microwave homodyne detection. We describe the principle of the setup, as well as its implementation and calibration. Finally, we show that our setup allows to fully characterize a subnanosecond on-demand single electron source. More generally, its sensitivity and bandwidth make it suitable for applications manipulating single charges at GHz frequencies.

Noise of a single electron emitter: Experiment

We present here the experimental study of the short time correlations of the current fluctuations generated by a periodic single electron emitter. The electron emitter is a mesoscopic capacitor, a top gated quantum dot connected to a conductor via a tunable tunnel barrier. We observe a new fundamental noise for electrons which is associated with the quantum fluctuations of the electron emission time from one emission cycle to the other. This random jitter between the emission trigger and the single particle emission is related to the random nature of single particle tunneling and is intrinsic to any single particle emitter. When the emitter emits a single particle at each cycle with unit probability, the noise reduces to this fundamental jitter limit which demonstrates single particle emission.