Observation of correlations beyond the single-particle picture in fermionic counting statistics

Abstract

The analysis of charge fluctuations in a mesoscopic device can shed light on the fundamental question of whether or not a single-particle picture of electron transport is appropriate, even in the presence of Coulomb interaction. It has been shown on general grounds that mapping the interacting system onto a fermionic single-particle description is subject to strict constraints on the charge-transfer statistics. These constraints can be formulated in terms of a sign rule for the factorial cumulants of the full counting statistics. We report here on the experimental observation of a sign-rule violation in a most elementary model system, i.e. a single-level quantum dot, and provide theoretical modeling that can quantitatively reproduce the experimental data. This reveals the presence of correlations introduced by electron-electron interaction.