Dephasing in the electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer at filling factor 2

TL;DR

This paper presents a physical model explaining dephasing in the electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer at filling factor 2, accounting for experimental observations through Coulomb interactions and edge excitation modes.

Contribution

The model introduces a new understanding of dephasing mechanisms involving Coulomb interactions and edge modes, explaining experimental phenomena and proposing a spectroscopy method.

Findings

Dephasing arises from Coulomb interactions at the 2D electron gas edge.

Long-range interactions cause separation into slow and fast edge modes.

The model accounts for temperature and voltage bias effects on visibility.

Abstract

We propose a simple physical model which describes dephasing in the electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer at filling factor 2. This model explains very recent experimental results, such as the unusual lobe-type structure in the visibility of Aharonov-Bohm oscillations, phase rigidity, and the asymmetry of the visibility as a function of transparencies of quantum point contacts. According to our model, dephasing in the interferometer originates from strong Coulomb interaction at the edge of two-dimensional electron gas. The long-range character of the interaction leads to a separation of the spectrum of edge excitations on slow and fast mode. These modes are excited by electron tunneling and carry away the phase information. The new energy scale associated with the slow mode determines the temperature dependence of the visibility and the period of its oscillations as a function of voltage bias. Moreover, the variation of the lobe structure from one experiment to another is explained by specific charging effects, which are different in all experiments. We propose to use a strongly asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometer with one arm being much shorter than the other for the spectroscopy of quantum Hall edge states.