Particle-wave duality in electrical noise

Abstract

Though electrical noise and conduction current are assigned to corpuscle-like electrons drifting in solid matter, this model hardly fits in the Fluctuation-Dissipation framework. However, fluctuations of energy due to displacements of single electrons between two close conductors lead to a discrete noise model looking like continuous in practice. The complex Admittance it uses for the displacement and conduction currents between such conductors, allows a treatment of fluctuations and dissipations of electrical energy that excels the example of Callen and Welton using the complex Impedance of resistors. The new model thus obtained not only unifies the phase noise of electronic oscillators with the linewidth of lasers, but also explains why the shot noise that the drift theory assigns to conduction currents is not observed.