Theory of non-equilibrium electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding interaction effects in non-equilibrium electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometers, explaining phenomena like decoherence and plasmon dispersion.

Contribution

It introduces a non-equilibrium functional bosonization approach applicable to both short-range and long-range Coulomb interactions in quantum Hall edge states.

Findings

Good agreement with experimental visibility data for long-range interactions

Reveals how interactions cause dispersion, charging, and decoherence effects

Provides a unified theory for non-equilibrium phenomena in quantum Hall interferometers

Abstract

We develop a theoretical description of interaction-induced phenomena in an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer formed by integer quantum Hall edge states (with \nu =1 and 2 channels) out of equilibrium. Using the non-equilibrium functional bosonization framework, we derive an effective action which contains all the physics of the problem. We apply the theory to the model of a short-range interaction and to a more realistic case of long-range Coulomb interaction. The theory takes into account interaction-induced effects of dispersion of plasmons, charging, and decoherence. In the case of long-range interaction we find a good agreement between our theoretical results for the visibility of Aharonov-Bohm oscillations and experimental data.