Large current noise in nanoelectromechanical systems close to continuous mechanical instabilities

Abstract

We investigate the current noise of nanoelectromechanical systems close to a continuous mechanical instability. In the vicinity of the latter, the vibrational frequency of the nanomechanical system vanishes, rendering the system very sensitive to charge fluctuations and, hence, resulting in very large (super-Poissonian) current noise. Specifically, we consider a suspended single-electron transistor close to the Euler buckling instability. We show that such a system exhibits an exponential enhancement of the current noise when approaching the Euler instability which we explain in terms of telegraph noise.