Fluctuating-time and full counting statistics for quantum transport in a system with internal telegraphic noise

Abstract

Many molecular junctions display stochastic telegraphic switching between two distinct current values, which is therefore an important source of fluctuations in nanoscale quantum transport. We investigate electronic fluctuations arising via Markovian master equations; identifying regions of non-renewal behavior due to telegraphic switching. Non-renewal behavior is characterized by the emergence of correlations between successive first-passage times of detection in one of the leads. Our method of including telegraphic switching is general for any source-molecule-drain setup, but we consider three specific cases. In the first, we model stochastic transitions between an Anderson impurity with and without an applied magnetic field $B$. The last two scenarios couple the electronic level to a single vibrational mode via the Holstein model. We then stochastically switch between two vibrational conformations, with different electron-phonon coupling and vibrational frequency, which corresponds to different molecular conformations. Finally, we model the molecule attaching and detaching from an electrode by switching between two different molecule-electrode coupling strengths. We find, for all three cases, that including the telegraph process in the master equation induces relatively strong positive correlations, with Pearson coefficient $p \approx 0.5$, between successive first-passage times. These correlations only appear, however, when there is telegraphic switching between two significantly different transport scenarios, and we show that it arises from the underlying physics of the model. We also find that, in order for correlations to appear, the switching rate $ν$ must be much smaller than the rate of electron transfer $γ$.