Multi-particle interference in an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer

TL;DR

This paper explores multi-particle quantum interference effects in an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer driven by dynamic voltage pulses, revealing diffraction-like patterns in interference visibility due to multi-particle interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a Floquet scattering formalism to analyze multi-particle interference in an electronic interferometer with dynamic single-electron sources, highlighting the diffraction-like interference patterns.

Findings

Multi-particle states decompose into single-particle correlation functions.

Visibility exhibits a Fraunhofer-like diffraction pattern.

Multi-particle pulses produce grid-like interference patterns.

Abstract

The recent development of dynamic single-electron sources makes it possible to observe and manipulate the quantum properties of individual charge carriers in mesoscopic circuits. Here, we investigate multi-particle effects in an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer driven by dynamic voltage pulses. To this end, we employ a Floquet scattering formalism to evaluate the interference current and the visibility in the outputs of the interferometer. An injected multi-particle state can be described by its first-order correlation function, which we decompose into a sum of elementary correlation functions that each represent a single particle. Each particle in the pulse contributes independently to the interference current, while the visibility (determined by the maximal interference current) exhibits a Fraunhofer-like diffraction pattern caused by the multi-particle interference between different particles in the pulse. For a sequence of multi-particle pulses, the visibility resembles the diffraction pattern from a grid, with the role of the grid and the spacing between the slits being played by the pulses and the time delay between them. Our findings may be observed in future experiments by injecting multi-particle pulses into an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer.