Decoherence and single electron charging in an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer

TL;DR

This study explores how temperature and voltage affect quantum interference in an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer, revealing unexpected amplitude suppression and conductance oscillations possibly linked to single electron charging.

Contribution

It provides experimental insights into decoherence and charging effects in quantum interferometers, aligning observed dependencies with theoretical models and identifying new conductance oscillations.

Findings

Interference fringe amplitude is smaller than theoretical predictions.

Visibility depends on temperature and bias voltage as predicted.

Conductance oscillations with six times smaller period are observed, likely related to single electron charging.

Abstract

We investigate the temperature and voltage dependence of the quantum interference in an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer using edge channels in the integer quantum-Hall-regime. The amplitude of the interference fringes is significantly smaller than expected from theory; nevertheless the functional dependence of the visibility on temperature and bias voltage agrees very well with theoretical predictions. Superimposed on the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) oscillations, a conductance oscillation with six times smaller period is observed. The latter depends only on gate voltage and not on the AB-phase, and may be related to single electron charging.