We present a scattering theory description for the inelastic current noise in the presence of electron-vibration interactions. In this description, we specify elastic and inelastic scattering contributions to the shot noise by examining charge transfers between scattering states and energy exchange between electrons and vibrations. The elastic and inelastic scattering processes are further decomposed into current correlations of electrons at the same energy and those of electrons at different energies. Focusing on the inelastic noise signals defined as steps in the voltage derivative of the shot noise, we show that single-channel systems have two ranges of transmission at which the inelastic noise signals exhibit the crossover between positive and negative signs. In a high-transmission regime, even and odd vibrational modes of mirror-symmetric systems provide upper and lower bounds to the ratio of the inelastic noise signal to the conductance step. This can be a theoretical justification for models used to understand the recent noise experiment [Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 146602 (2012)] and numerical calculations on gold atomic chains [Phys. Rev. B 86, 155411 (2012)].

• Received 19 July 2013
• Revised 18 November 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.89.035413