Abstract

Few-electron sources based on periodic trapping and controlled release of individual charges in a nanoelectronic circuit open up new prospects for exploration of new equilibrium transport and solid-state quantum information processing. Quantized charge pumping with dynamic quantum dots, pioneered by Cambridge-NPL collaboration, has recently progressed to high levels of robustness, speed and accuracy. This remarkable experimental progress has been in part driven by a gradually improving theoretical understanding of the physical mechanisms of charge capture and the success of the decay cascade model for backtunneling. In this talk I will present the latest theory results from the Riga group, and explain the conjectured dynamical energy scales that control the current-voltage characteristics of a non-adiabatic single-electron pump. The theoretical separation of competing error processes is supported by re-interpretation of existing experimental data, and by new sets of experiments performed at Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt in Braunschweig, Germany. Prospects for observing Landau-Zener-backtunneling interference in high-precision measurements of charge quantization plateaux will be discussed.