A Mesoscopic Mach-Zehnder Interferometer

Kicheon Kang

We propose a solid-state quantum eraser in which electrons are injected into a mesoscopic conductor in the quantum Hall regime. The conductor is composed of a two-path interferometer, an electronic analog of the optical Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and a quantum point-contact detector capacitively coupled to the interferometer. While the interference of the output current at the interferometer is suppressed by the which-path information, we show that the which-path information is erased and the interference reappears in the cross-correlation measurement between the interferometer and the detector output leads. We also investigate a modified setup in which the detector is replaced by a two-path interferometer. We show that the distinguishability of the path and the visibility of joint detection can be controlled in a continuous manner and satisfy a complementarity relation for the entangled electrons.

Moty Heiblum

Yunjin Choi, Justin Dressel, Andrew N. Jordan

Janne Kotilahti, Pablo Burset, Michael Moskalets +1 more

The development of dynamic single-electron sources has made 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 a series of 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 (given 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 a Mach-Zehnder interferometer.

Mario Junior Mencagli, Nasim Mohammadi Estakhri, Brian E. Edwards +1 more

We present how waves in ensembles of Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZIs) can be utilized to perform mathematical operations and solve integral equations with kernels that can be reconfigured by adjusting phases in such MZIs.

H. K. Zienkiewicz