Of Decoherent Electrons and Disordered Conductors

TL;DR

This paper reviews electron decoherence in low-dimensional conductors, highlighting that intrinsic mechanisms, not magnetic impurities, dominate decoherence at low temperatures in pure gold wires.

Contribution

It clarifies that electron interaction with magnetic impurities does not explain decoherence, emphasizing the intrinsic nature of decoherence mechanisms in low-dimensional conductors.

Findings

Magnetic impurities are not responsible for decoherence in pure gold wires.

Decoherence appears to be intrinsic rather than impurity-driven.

High-field measurements support the intrinsic decoherence hypothesis.

Abstract

This lecture note reviews a variety of transport and thermodynamic measurements of electron decoherence time in low-dimensional conductors at low temperature. The mechanism of dephasing by electron interaction mediated by an arbitrarily small number of magnetic impurities is neither applicable to our linear-response measurements of weak localization, nor is it observed in the recent high-field measurements of the decoherence time in nominally pure quasi-one dimensional gold wires. The source of decoherence, after extensive experiments, still appears to be intrinsic.