Noise in diffusive mesoscopic conductors

Full text: Mesoscopic physics is emerging as the basis for a new technology. Although very successful theories of electrical transport at near-nanometre scales are available, describing current-noise behaviour in the same regime is not straightforward. Given that practical mesoscopic electronics must deal with a much larger role played by charge fluctuations, the time is well ripe for a more rigorous attack on these problems. Here we survey a few of the issues confronting mesoscopic noise physics, the existing phenomenological approaches, and a promising microscopic model based on a kinetic approach. Finally we discuss some outstanding theoretical and experimental questions. Examples are given how the spectral density of shot noise can be used to obtain charge quantum in mesoscopic devices