Synchronizing a single-electron shuttle to an external drive

The nanomechanical single-electron shuttle is a resonant system in which asuspended metallic island oscillates between and impacts at two electrodes. Thissetup holds promise for one-by-one electron transport and the establishment ofan absolute current standard. While the charge transported per oscillation by thenanoscale island will be quantized in the Coulomb blockade regime, the fre-quency of such a shuttle depends sensitively on many parameters, leading todrift and noise. Instead of considering the nonlinearities introduced by theimpact events as a nuisance, here we propose to exploit the resulting nonlineardynamics to realize a highly precise oscillation frequency via synchronization ofthe shuttle self-oscillations to an external signal. We link the established phe-nomenological description of synchronization based on the ADLERequation tothe microscopic nonlinear dynamics of the electron shuttle by calculating theeffective ADLERconstant analytically in terms of the microscopic parameters.     «

The nanomechanical single-electron shuttle is a resonant system in which asuspended metallic island oscillates between and impacts at two electrodes. Thissetup holds promise for one-by-one electron transport and the establishment ofan absolute current standard. While the charge transported per oscillation by thenanoscale island will be quantized in the Coulomb blockade regime, the fre-quency of such a shuttle depends sensitively on many parameters, leading todrift and noise. Instead of consideri...     »