Spectral distribution and wavefunction of electrons emitted from a single particle source in the quantum Hall regime

Abstract

We investigate theoretically a scheme for spectroscopy of electrons emitted by an on-demand single particle source. The total system, with an electron turnstile source and a single level quantum dot spectrometer, is implemented with edge states in a conductor in the quantum Hall regime. Employing a Floquet scattering approach, the source and the spectrometer are analyzed within a single theoretical framework. The non-equilibrium distribution of the emitted electrons is analyzed via the direct current at the dot spectrometer. In the adiabatic and intermediate source frequency regimes, the distribution is found to be strongly peaked around the active resonant level of the turnstile. At high frequencies the distribution is split up into a set of fringes, resulting from the interplay of resonant transport through the turnstile and absorption or emission of individual Floquet quanta. For ideal source operation, with exactly one electron emitted per cycle, an expression for the single electron wavefunction is derived.