English

Unexpected finite-bias visibility dependence in an electronic Mach Zehnder interferometer

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2014-01-03 v1

Abstract

We use an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer to explore the non-equilibrium coherence of the electron waves within the edge-states that form in the integral quantum Hall effect. The visibility of the interference as a function of bias-voltage and transmission probabilities of the mirrors, which are realized by quantum point-contacts, reveal an unexpected asymmetry at finite bias when the transmission probability TT of the mirror at the input of the interferometer is varied between 0 and 100%, while the transmission probability of the other mirror at the output is kept fixed. This can lead to the surprising result of an increasing magnitude of interference with increasing bias-voltage for certain values of TT. A detailed analysis for various transmission probabilities and different directions of the magnetic field demonstrates that this effect is not related to the transmission characteristics of a single quantum point contact, but is an inherent property of the Mach-Zehnder interferometer with edge-states.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0812.2612,
  title  = {Unexpected finite-bias visibility dependence in an electronic Mach Zehnder interferometer},
  author = {E. Bieri and M. Weiss and O. Goktas and M. Hauser and S. Csonka and S. Oberholzer and C. Schonenberger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0812.2612},
  year   = {2014}
}