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Abstract
Theoretical and experimental work concerned with dynamic fluctuations has developed
into a very active and fascinating subfield of mesoscopic physics. We present a review
of this development focusing on shot noise in small electric conductors. Shot noise
is a consequence of the quantization of charge. It can be used to obtain information
on a system which is not available through conductance measurements. In particular,
shot noise experiments can determine the charge and statistics of the quasiparticles
relevant for transport, and reveal information on the potential profile and internal
energy scales of mesoscopic systems. Shot noise is generally more sensitive to the
effects of electron-electron interactions than the average conductance. We present
a discussion based on the conceptually transparent scattering approach and on the
classical Langevin and Boltzmann-Langevin methods; in addition a discussion of results
which cannot be obtained by these methods is provided. We conclude the review by pointing
out a number of unsolved problems and an outlook on the likely future development
of the field.