\sect{Baruch's D26.} Shot noise: The discreteness of the electron charge ${e}$ implies that the current is not uniform in time and is a source of noise. Consider a vacuum tube in which electrons are emitted from the negative electrode and flow to the positive electrode; the probability of emitting any one electron is independent of when other electrons are emitted. Suppose that the current meter has a response time $\tau$. If $T$ is the average time between the emission of two electrons, then the average current is $\langle I\rangle=e/T=\frac{e}{\tau}t$, where $t=\tau/T$ is the transmission probability, $0\leq t\leq 1$. \begin{itemize} \item [(a)] Show that the fluctuations in $I$ are $\langle \delta I^{2}\rangle =\frac{e^2}{\tau^2}t(1-t)$. Why would you expect the fluctuations to vanish at both $t=0$ and $t=1$? [Hint: For each $\tau$ interval ${n_{i}=0}$ or ${n_{i}=1}$ and $\langle n_i\rangle=\tau/T$; discretize time in units of $\tau$.] \item [(b)] Consider the meter response to be in the range ${0<|\omega |<2\pi /\tau }$. Show that for $t\ll 1$ the fluctuations in a frequency interval $d\omega$ are ${d\langle \delta I^{2}\rangle = e\langle I\rangle d\omega /2\pi}$ . At what frequencies does this noise dominate over the Johnson noise in the circuit? \item[(c)] Show that the 3rd order commulant is $\langle (I-\langle I\rangle))^3\rangle=\frac{e^3}{\tau^3}t(1-t)(1-2t)$. \\ \end{itemize} %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%