Current noise in molecular junctions: Effects of the electron-phonon interaction

Abstract

We study inelastic effects on the electronic current noise in molecular junctions, due to the coupling between transport electrons and vibrational degrees of freedom. Using a full counting statistics approach based on the generalized Keldysh Green's-function technique, we calculate in an unified manner both the mean current and the zero-frequency current noise. For multilevel junctions with weak electron-phonon coupling, we give analytical formulas for the lowest-order inelastic corrections to the noise in terms of universal temperature- and voltage-dependent functions and junction-dependent prefactors, which can be evaluated microscopically, e.g., with ab initio methodologies. We identify distinct terms corresponding to the mean-field contribution to noise and to the vertex corrections, and we show that the latter contribute substantially to the inelastic noise. Finally, we illustrate our results by a simple model of two electronic levels which are mutually coupled by the electron-phonon interaction and show that the inelastic noise spectroscopy is a sensitive diagnostic tool.