| ased on the Ambegaokar-Eckern-Schön approach to the Coulomb blockade in a single electron transistor we develop a complete quantum theory of the single electron transistor. We identify a previously unrecognized physical observable in the problem that, unlike the usual average charge on the island, is robustly quantized for any finite value of the tunneling conductance as the temperature goes to the absolute zero. This novel quantity is fundamentally related to the non-symmetrized (quantum) current noise in the single electron transistor. |
|