Abstract
We study the charge transfer in a small grain oscillating between two leads. Coulomb blockade restricts the charge fluctuations in such a way that only zero or one additional electrons can sit on the grain. The system thus acts as a charge shuttle. We obtain the full counting statistics of charge transfer and discuss its behavior. For large oscillation amplitude the probability of transferring electrons per cycle is strongly peaked around one. The peak is asymmetric since its form is controlled by different parameters for and . Under certain conditions the systems behaves as if the effective charge is of the elementary one. Knowledge of the counting statistics gives a new insight on the mechanism of charge transfer.
- Received 20 January 2004
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.69.245409