Many-body manifestation of interaction-free measurement: the Elitzur-Vaidman bomb

TL;DR

This paper explores how many-body effects influence the realization of interaction-free measurement in an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer, identifying conditions under which quantum wave-particle duality effects reemerge.

Contribution

It demonstrates the conditions where single-particle quantum effects can be observed in a many-body electronic system, bridging the gap between idealized and realistic scenarios.

Findings

Quantum wave-particle duality effects reappear with diluted electron beams.

Many-body correlations typically suppress interaction-free measurement signatures.

Short measurement times enable observation of single-particle quantum effects.

Abstract

We consider an implementation of the Elitzur-Vaidman bomb experiment in a DC-biased electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer with a leakage port on one of its arms playing the role of a "lousy bom". Many-body correlations tend to screen out manifestations of interaction-free measurement. Analyzing the correlations between the current at the interformeter's drains and at the leakage port, we identify the limit where the originally proposed single-particle effect is recovered. Specifically, we find that in the regime of sufficiently diluted injected electron beam and short measurement times, effects of quantum mechanical wave-particle duality emerge in the cross-current correlations.