Full counting statistics of super-Poissonian shot noise in multilevel quantum dots

Abstract

We examine the full counting statistics of quantum dots, which display super-Poissonian shot noise. By an extension to a generic situation with many excited states we identify the underlying transport process. The statistics is a sum of independent Poissonian processes of bunches of different sizes, which leads to the enhanced noise. The obtained results could be useful in determining transport characteristics in molecules and large quantum dots, since the noise (and higher cumulants) allow us to identify the internal level structure, which is not visible in the average current. © 2005 The American Physical Society.