Phase rigidity breaking in open Aharonov-Bohm ring coupled to a cantilever

TL;DR

This paper investigates how mechanical coupling to a cantilever affects phase rigidity in an Aharonov-Bohm ring, revealing inelastic phonon scattering causes phase variation and enabling phase shift measurements to gauge electron-phonon interactions.

Contribution

It demonstrates phase rigidity breaking in a two-terminal AB ring due to phonons, providing a method to measure electron-phonon coupling in NEMS devices.

Findings

Phase rigidity is broken by inelastic phonon scattering.

Continuous transmission phase variation is observable in a two-terminal NEMS.

Phase shifts can be used to quantify electron-phonon coupling strength.

Abstract

The conductance and the transmittance phase shifts of a two-terminal Aharonov-Bohm (AB) ring are analyzed in the presence of mechanical displacements due to coupling to an external can- tilever. We show that phase rigidity is broken, even in the linear response regime, by means of inelastic scattering due to phonons. Our device provides a way of observing continuous variation of the transmission phase through a two-terminal nano-electro-mechanical system (NEMS). We also propose measurements of phase shifts as a way to determine the strength of the electron-phonon coupling in NEMS.