Quantum Noise from a Bohmian perspective: fundamental understanding and practical computation in electron devices

Abstract

In the literature, the study of electron transport in quantum devices is mainly devoted to DC properties. The fluctuations of the electrical current around these DC values, the so-called quantum noise, are much less analyzed. The computation of quantum noise is intrinsically linked (by temporal correlations) to our ability to understand/compute the time-evolution of a quantum system that is measured several times. There are several quantum theories that provide different (but empirically equivalent) ways of understanding/computing the perturbation of the wave function when it is measured. In this work, quantum noise associated to an electron impinging upon a semitransparent barrier is explained using Bohmian mechanics (which deals with wave functions and point-like particles). From this result, the fundamental understanding and practical computation of quantum noise with Bohmian trajectories are discussed. Numerical simulations of low and high frequency features of quantum shot noise in a resonant tunneling diode are presented (through the BITLLES simulator), showing the usefulness of the Bohmian approach.