Low temperature dephasing in irradiated metallic wires

TL;DR

This study measures phase coherence times in irradiated silver wires at very low temperatures, demonstrating that ion implantation does not cause additional dephasing, thus clarifying the effects of impurities on quantum coherence.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence that ion implantation does not induce extra dephasing in metallic wires at low temperatures, clarifying the role of impurities in quantum coherence.

Findings

Ion implantation does not affect phase coherence time at low temperatures.

Phase coherence times measured from 100 mK to 10 K.

Implantation process does not cause additional dephasing.

Abstract

We present phase coherence time measurements in quasi-one-dimensional Ag wires implanted with Ag$^{+}$ ions with an energy of $100 keV$. The measurements have been carried out in the temperature range from $100 mK$ up to $10 K$; this has to be compared with the Kondo temperature of iron in silver, i.e. $T_{K}^{Ag/Fe} \approx 4 K$, used in recent experiments on dephasing in Kondo systems\cite{mallet_prl_06,birge_prl_06}. We show that the phase coherence time is not affected by the implantation procedure, clearly proving that ion implantation process by itself \emph{does not lead to any extra dephasing} at low temperature.