The sound of electrons shattering...can be rather quiet

Josephine Yu, Stanford
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PAB B421

This talk will highlight the results of arXiv:2509.25322. In a Fermi liquid, the shot noise signature reveals which scattering mechanism — electron-electron or electron-impurity — dominantly impedes charge motion and is thereby a window into the microscopic physics of an electronic system. However, the understanding of shot noise in strongly correlated phases, for which a quasiparticle picture may not be justified, is far less advanced. In this talk, I will share recent progress on this problem for a certain class of strongly-correlated systems. In particular, I will present a theory of the non-equilibrium current response for metallic systems near quantum critical points where electronic quasiparticles fractionalize, such as systems near continuous metal-insulator transitions. I will sketch the derivation of a non-perturbative current noise composition law, wherein the total noise is the sum of the noise of each fractionalized constituent (bosonic holons and fermionic spinons), weighted by their respective resistivities. This composition rule can be interpreted in terms of a simple analogy with resistors in series. Lastly, I will present an example of how quantum criticality can collude with fractionalization to suppress the measured shot noise in sufficiently long nanowires.

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