No Arabic abstract
Due to their high energy, hot electrons in quantum Hall edge states can be considered as single particles that have the potential to be used for quantum optics-like experiments. Unlike photons, however, electrons typically undergo scattering processes in transport, which results in a loss of coherence and limits their ability to show quantum-coherent behaviour. Here we study theoretically the decoherence mechanisms of hot electrons in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and highlight the role played by both acoustic and optical phonon emission. We discuss optimal choices of experimental parameters and show that high visibilities of $gtrsim 85%$ are achievable in hot-electron devices over relatively long distances of 10 $mu$m. We also discuss energy filtration techniques to remove decoherent electrons and show that this can increase visibilities to over $95%$. This represents an improvement over Fermi-level electron quantum optics, and suggests hot-electron charge pumps as a platform for realising quantum-coherent nanoelectronic devices.
In this paper, we study the electron spin decoherence of single defects in silicon carbide (SiC) nuclear spin bath. We find that, although the natural abundance of $^{29}rm{Si}$ ($p_{rm{Si}}=4.7%$) is about 4 times larger than that of $^{13}{rm C}$ ($p_{rm{C}}=1.1%$), the electron spin coherence time of defect centers in SiC nuclear spin bath in strong magnetic field ($B>300~rm{Gauss}$) is longer than that of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in $^{13}{rm C}$ nuclear spin bath in diamond. The reason for this counter-intuitive result is the suppression of heteronuclear-spin flip-flop process in finite magnetic field. Our results show that electron spin of defect centers in SiC are excellent candidates for solid state spin qubit in quantum information processing.
We theoretically study the inelastic scattering rate and the carrier mean free path for energetic hot electrons in graphene, including both electron-electron and electron-phonon interactions. Taking account of optical phonon emission and electron-electron scattering, we find that the inelastic scattering time $tau sim 10^{-2}-10^{-1} mathrm{ps}$ and the mean free path $l sim 10-10^2 mathrm{nm}$ for electron densities $n = 10^{12}-10^{13} mathrm{cm}^{-2}$. In particular, we find that the mean free path exhibits a finite jump at the phonon energy $200 mathrm{meV}$ due to electron-phonon interaction. Our results are directly applicable to device structures where ballistic transport is relevant with inelastic scattering dominating over elastic scattering.
In this article we review our work on the dynamics and decoherence of electron and hole spins in single and double quantum dots. The first part, on electron spins, focuses on decoherence induced via the hyperfine interaction while the second part covers decoherence and relaxation of heavy-hole spins due to spin-orbit interaction as well as the manipulation of heavy-hole spin using electric dipole spin resonance.
We present a theoretical model for the dynamics of an electron that gets trapped by means of decoherence and quantum interference in the central quantum dot (QD) of a semiconductor nanoring (NR) made of five QDs, between 100 K and 300 K. The electrons dynamics is described by a master equation with a Hamiltonian based on the tight-binding model, taking into account electron-LO phonon interaction (ELOPI). Based on this configuration, the probability to trap an electron with no decoherence is almost 27%. In contrast, the probability to trap an electron with decoherence is 70% at 100 K, 63% at 200 K and 58% at 300 K. Our model provides a novel method of trapping an electron at room temperature.
Complex molecules are intriguing objects at the interface between quantum and classical phenomena. Compared to the electrons, neutrons, or atoms studied in earlier matter-wave experiments, they feature a much more complicated internal structure, but can still behave as quantum objects in their center-of-mass motion. Molecules may involve a large number of vibrational modes and highly excited rotational states, they can emit thermal photons, electrons, or even atoms, and they exhibit large cross sections for collisional interactions with residual background gases. This makes them ideal candidates for decoherence experiments which we review in this contribution.