title: Universal oscillations in counting statistics.
abstract: Noise is a result of stochastic processes that originate from quantum or classical sources. Higher-order cumulants of the probability distribution underlying the stochastic events are believed to contain details that characterize the correlations within a given noise source and its interaction with the environment, but they are often difficult to measure. Here we report measurements of the transient cumulants n(m) of the number n of passed charges to very high orders (up to m = 15) for electron transport through a quantum dot. For large m, the cumulants display striking oscillations as functions of measurement time with magnitudes that grow factorially with m. Using mathematical properties of high-order derivatives in the complex plane we show that the oscillations of the cumulants in fact constitute a universal phenomenon, appearing as functions of almost any parameter, including time in the transient regime. These ubiquitous oscillations and the factorial growth are system-independent and our theory provides a unified interpretation of previous theoretical studies of high-order cumulants as well as our new experimental data.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. flindt@physics.harvard.edu
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Flindt
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Fricke
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Hohls
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Novotny
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Netocny
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Brandes
authors.forename: R J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Haug