Macroscopic Coulomb-blockade effect in a constant-current-driven light-emitting diode.

The discovery of single electron charging effect has provided the possibility of current regulation across a mesoscopic capacitor (Coulomb blockade effect). It has been pointed out recently1 that the similar effect, namely the macroscopic Coulomb blockade due to the collective charging energy of many electrons across junction depletion capacitance, could be the underlying mechanism for pump noise suppression in semiconductor lasers and light emitting diodes (LED’s) in generating sub-Poissonian light. The model predicts a finite squeezing bandwidth in these p-n junctions.