Phonon-assisted current noise in molecular junctions

Federica Haupt, Tomas Novotny, Wolfgang Belzig

Published 2009-03-12, updated 2009-09-28Version 2

We investigate the effects of phonon scattering on the electronic current noise through nanojunctions using the non-equilibrium Green's functions formalism extended to include the counting field. In the case of weak electron-phonon coupling and a single broad electronic level we derive an analytic expression for the current noise at arbitrary temperature and identify physically distinct contributions based on their voltage dependence. We apply our theory to the experimentally relevant case of a deuterium molecule placed in a break-junction and predict a significant inelastic contribution to the current noise.