Inelastic scattering and shot noise in diffusive mesoscopic conductors

Abstract

A short summary of the drift-diffusion-Langevin formalism for calculating finite-frequency shot noise in diffusive conductors is presented. Two new results are included in this presentation. First, we arrive at a simple (but accurate) phenomenological expression for the semiclassical distribution function of electrons in the presence of electron-electron scattering. Second, it is shown that in thin samples, low-frequency shot noise may be large even if the sample length is much larger than the electron-phonon relaxation length.