Fractional charges in conventional sequential electron tunneling

Abstract

The notion of fractional charges was up until now reserved for quasiparticle excitations emerging in strongly correlated quantum systems, such as Laughlin states in the fractional quantum Hall effect, Luttinger quasiparticles, or parafermions. Here, we consider topological transitions in the full counting statistics of standard sequential electron tunneling, and find that they lead to the same type of charge fractionalization - strikingly without requiring exotic quantum correlations. This conclusion relies on the realization that fundamental integer charge quantization fixes the global properties of the transport statistics whereas fractional charges can only be well-defined locally. We then show that the reconciliation of these two contradicting notions results in a nontrivially quantized geometric phase defined in the detector space. In doing so, we show that detector degrees of freedom can be used to describe topological transitions in nonequilibrium open quantum systems. Moreover, the quantized geometric phase reveals a profound analogy between the fractional charge effect in sequential tunneling and fractional Josephson effect in topological superconducting junctions, where likewise the Majorana- or parafermions exhibit a charge which is at odds with the Cooper pair charge as the underlying unit of the supercurrent. In order to provide means for an experimental verification of our claims, we demonstrate the fractional nature of transport statistics at the example of highly feasible transport models, such as weakly tunnel-coupled quantum dots or charge islands. We then show that the geometric phase can be accessed through the detector's waiting time distribution. Finally, we find that topological transitions in the transport statistics could even lead to new applications, such as the unexpected possibility to directly measure features beyond the resolution limit of a detector.