Electron interferometry in integer quantum Hall edge channels

Abstract

We consider the electronic analog of the Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer from quantum optics. In this realistic condensed matter device, single electrons are injected and travel along opposite chiral edge states of the integer quantum Hall effect, colliding at a quantum point contact (QPC). We monitor the fate of the colliding excitations by calculating zero-frequency current correlations at the output of the QPC. In the simpler case of filling factor $\nu =1$, we recover the standard result of a dip in the current noise as a function of the time delay between electron injections. For simultaneous injection, the current correlations exactly vanish, as dictated by the Pauli principle. This picture is however dramatically modified when interactions are present, as we show in the case of a filling factor $\nu =2$. There, each edge state is made out of two co-propagating channels, leading to charge fractionalization, and ultimately to decoherence. The latter phenomenon reduces the degree of indistinguishability between the two electron wavepackets, yielding a reduced contrast in the HOM signal. This naturally brings about the question of stronger interaction, offering a natural extension of the present work to the case of fractional quantum Hall effect where many open and fascinating questions remain.

Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Unsolved Problem on Noise, UPoN 2015, Barcelona, Spain

References in corpus (16)

• An On-Demand Coherent Single Electron Source
• Coherence and Indistinguishability of Single Electrons Emitted by Independent Sources
• Minimal excitation states of electrons in one-dimensional wires
• Dephasing in the electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer at filling factor 2
• Quantized dynamics of a coherent capacitor
• Shot noise of a mesoscopic two-particle collider
• Real time decoherence of Landau and Levitov quasi-particles in quantum Hall edge channels
• Generation of energy selective excitations in quantum Hall edge states
• Electron and hole Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometry
• Lower bound for electron spin entanglement from beamsplitter current correlations
• Electronic Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer for multi-mode entanglement detection
• Quantum detection of electronic flying qubits
• Single quasiparticle and electron nano-emitter in the fractional quantum Hall regime
• Spectroscopy of electron flows with single- and two-particle emitters
• Perturbative fluctuation dissipation relation for non-equilibrium finite frequency noise in quantum circuits
• Solution of a model for the two-channel electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Coherent control of single electrons: a review of current progress
• Single-particle shot noise at non-zero temperature
• Composite two-particle sources
• Heat Pulses in Electron Quantum Optics