Numerical evaluation of shot noise using real-time simulations

Abstract

We present a method to determine the shot noise in quantum systems from knowledge of their time evolution---the latter being obtained using numerical simulation techniques. While our ultimate goal is the study of interacting systems, the main issues for the numerical determination of the noise do not depend on the interactions. To discuss them, we concentrate on the single resonant level model, which consists in a single impurity attached to noninteracting leads, with spinless fermions. We use exact diagonalizations to obtain time evolution and are able to use known analytic results as benchmarks. We obtain a complete characterization of finite-size effects at zero frequency, where we find that the finite-size corrections scale $\ensuremath{\propto}{G}^{2}$, $G$ the differential conductance. We also discuss finite frequency noise as well as the effects of damping in the leads.