Thermodynamic bound on current fluctuations in coherent conductors

Abstract

We derive a universal bound on the large-deviation functions of particle currents in coherent conductors. This bound depends only on the mean value of the relevant current and the total rate of entropy production required to maintain a non-equilibrium steady state, thus showing that both typical and rare current fluctuations are ultimately constrained by dissipation. Our analysis relies on the scattering approach to quantum transport and applies to any multi-terminal setup with arbitrary chemical potential and temperature gradients, provided the transmission coefficients between reservoirs are symmetric. This condition is satisfied for any two-terminal system and, more generally, when the dynamics of particles within the conductor are symmetric under time-reversal. For typical current fluctuations, we recover a recently derived thermodynamic uncertainty relation for coherent transport. To illustrate our theory, we analyze a specific model comprising two reservoirs connected by a chain of quantum dots, which shows that our bound can be saturated asymptotically.