We study the influence of the phase relaxation process on Hall resistance and spin Hall current of a mesoscopic two-dimensional (2D) four-terminal Hall cross-bar with or without Rashba spin-orbit interaction (SOI) in a perpendicular uniform magnetic field. We find that the plateaus of the Hall resistance with even number of edge states can survive for very strong phase relaxation when the system size becomes much longer than the phase coherence length. On the other hand, the odd integer Hall resistance plateaus arising from the SOI are easily destroyed by the weak phase relaxation during the competition between the magnetic field and the SOI which delocalize the edge states. In addition, we have also studied the transverse spin Hall current and found that it exhibits resonant behavior whenever the Fermi level crosses the Landau band of the system. The phase relaxation process weakens the resonant spin Hall current and enhances the non-resonant spin Hall current.
The quantum Hall effect (QHE) is a topologically protected phenomenon which has been observed in various systems. In experiments, the size of Hall bar device to realize the QHE is generally much larger than the phase coherence length, in which the quantum coherence of electrons is destroyed. Here, we theoretically study the influence of dephasing effect on the quantized Hall (QH) plateaus. We find that the QH plateau disappears in perfectly quantum coherent systems if the coupling between leads and central region is imperfect. The Hall resistance is very large and strongly oscillates instead o…
The influence of dephasing on the quantum spin Hall effect (QSHE) is studied. In the absence of dephasing, the longitudinal resistance in a QSHE system exhibits the quantum plateaus. We find that these quantum plateaus are robust against the normal dephasing but fragile with the spin dephasing. Thus, these quantum plateaus only survive in mesoscopic samples. Moreover, the longitudinal resistance increases linearly with the sample length but is insensitive to the sample width. These characters are in excellent agreement with the recent experimental results [science {\bf 318}, 766 (2007)]. In ad…
We consider the dephasing rate of an electron level in a quantum dot, placed next to a fluctuating edge current in the fractional quantum Hall effect. Using perturbation theory, we show that this rate has an anomalous dependence on the bias voltage applied to the neighboring quantum point contact, which originates from the Luttinger liquid physics which describes the Hall fluid. General expressions are obtained using a screened Coulomb interaction. The dephasing rate is strictly proportional to the zero frequency backscattering current noise, which allows to describe exactly the weak to strong…
We study dephasing in electron transport through a large quantum dot (a Fabry-Perot interferometer) in the fractional quantum Hall regime with filling factor $2/3$. In the regime of sequential tunneling, dephasing occurs due to electron fractionalization into counterpropagating charge and neutral edge modes on the dot. In particular, when the charge mode moves much faster than the neutral mode, and at temperatures higher than the level spacing of the dot, electron fractionalization combined with tje fractional statistics of the charge mode leads to the dephasing selectively suppressing $h/e$ A…
The dephasing rate of an electron level in a quantum dot, placed next to a fluctuating edge current in the fractional quantum Hall effect, is considered. Using perturbation theory, we first show that this rate has an anomalous dependence on the bias voltage applied to the neighboring quantum point contact, because of the Luttinger liquid physics which describes the fractional Hall fluid. Next, we describe exactly the weak to strong backscattering crossover using the Bethe-Ansatz solution.
An electronic Mach Zehnder interferometer is used in the integer quantum hall regime at filling factor 2, to study the dephasing of the interferences. This is found to be induced by the electrical noise existing in the edge states capacitively coupled to each others. Electrical shot noise created in one channel leads to phase randomization in the other, which destroys the interference pattern. These findings are extended to the dephasing induced by thermal noise instead of shot noise: it explains the underlying mechanism responsible for the finite temperature coherence time $τ_ϕ(T)$ of the edg…
The longstanding problem of the Hall resistivity rho(x,y) in the Hall insulator phase is addressed using four-lead Chalker-Coddington networks. Electron interaction effects are introduced via a finite dephasing length. In the quantum coherent regime, we find that rho(x,y) scales with the longitudinal resistivity rho(x,x), and they both diverge exponentially with dephasing length. In the Ohmic limit, (dephasing length shorter than Hall puddles' size), rho(x,y) remains quantized and independent of rho(x,x). This suggests a new experimental probe for dephasing processes.
Motivated by the recent experimental observation [D. A. Abanin et al., Science 323, 328 (2011)] of nonlocality in magnetotransport near the Dirac point in six-terminal graphene Hall bars, for a wide range of temperatures and magnetic fields, we develop a nonequilibrium Green function (NEGF) theory of this phenomenon. In the phase-coherent regime and strong magnetic field, we find large spin Hall (SH) conductance in four-terminal bridges, where the SH current is pure only at the Dirac point (DP), as well as the nonlocal voltage at a remote location in six-terminal bars where the direct and inve…
This paper has been retracted. The authors have discovered a possible problem in applications of the dephasing terminal approach to shot noise calculations in interference situations: Eq. (7) correctly re-introduces the anticorrelations between the currents in the two arms, but due to its semiclassical nature probably fails to describe the consequential diminishing of exchange effects at the second beamsplitter.
A charge fluctuator which is electrostatically coupled to a conducting channel may fully dephase quantum transport through the latter. Here, we address the case where a quantum dot (QD), playing the role of a charge fluctuator, is tunnel-coupled to an additional channel. In the case where the latter may support fractional charge, distinct differences from the integer case arise: Abrupt phase lapses of the transmission through the conducting channel occur (which may or may not be equal to $π$). This is accompanied by a cusp-like suppression of the interferometer's visibility, yet no full dephas…
We present a general analysis of shot noise in an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer, of the type investigated experimentally [Yang Ji et al., Nature 422, 415 (2003)], under the influence of dephasing produced by fluctuations of a classical field. We show how the usual partition noise expression T(1-T) is modified by dephasing, depending on the power spectrum of the environmental fluctuations.
Recently,a half-quantized Hall conductance (HQHC) plateau is experimentally observed in a semi-magnetic topological insulator heterostructure. However,the heterostructure is metallic with a nonzero longitudinal conductance, which contradicts the common belief that quantized Hall conductance is usually observed in insulators.In this work,we systematically study the surface transport of the semi-magnetic topological insulator with both gapped and gapless Dirac surfaces in the presence of dephasing process.In particular, we reveal that the HQHC is directly related to the half-quantized chiral cur…
Non-local currents and voltages are better able at withstanding the deleterious effects of dephasing than local currents and voltages in nanoscale systems. This hypothesis is known to be true in quantum Hall set-ups. We test this hypothesis in a four terminal quantum spin Hall set up wherein we compare the local resistance measurement with the non-local one. In addition to inelastic scattering induced dephasing we also test resilience of the resistance measurements in the aforesaid set-ups to disorder and spin-flip scattering. We find the axiom that non-local resistance is less affected by the…
We analyze the critical behavior of the dephasing rate induced by short-range electron-electron interaction near an Anderson transition of metal-insulator or quantum Hall type. The corresponding exponent characterizes the scaling of the transition width with temperature. Assuming no spin degeneracy, the critical behavior can be studied by performing the scaling analysis in the vicinity of the non-interacting fixed point, since the latter is stable with respect to the interaction. We combine an analytical treatment (that includes the identification of operators responsible for dephasing in the …
The dependence of the superconducting proximity effect on the amount of magnetic impurities in the normal part of Andreev interferometers has been studied experimentally. The dephasing rates obtained from fitting experimental data to quasiclassical theory of the proximity effect are consistent with the spin flip scattering from Cr impurities forming a local moment in the Cu host. In contrast, Ni impurities do not form a local moment in Cu and as a result there is no extra dephasing from Ni as long as Cu/Ni alloy remain paramagnetic.
We report the first theoretical estimate of the nuclear-spin dephasing time T_2 owing to the spin interaction with the two-dimensional electron gas, when the latter is in the integer quantum Hall state, in a two-dimensional heterojunction or quantum well at low temperature and in large applied magnetic field. We establish that the leading mechanism of dephasing is due to the impurity potentials that influence the dynamics of the spin via virtual magnetic spin-exciton scattering. Implications of our results for implementation of nuclear spins as quantum bits (qubits) for quantum computing are d…
We consider a four-terminal Aharonov-Bohm interference setup formed out of two edges of a quantum spin Hall insulator, supporting helical Luttinger liquids (HLLs). We show that the temperature and bias dependence of the interference oscillations are linked to the amount of spin flips in tunneling between two HLLs which is a unique signature of a HLL. We predict that spin dephasing depends on the electron-electron (e-e) interaction but differently from the charge dephasing due to distinct dominant tunneling excitations. In contrast, in a spinful Luttinger liquid with SU(2) invariance, uncharged…
The observation of coherent quantum transport phenomena in metals and semiconductors is limited by the eventual loss of phase coherence of the conducting electrons. We use the weak localization effect to measure the low-temperature dephasing time in a two-dimensional electron Fermi liquid in GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures. We use a novel temperature calibration method based on the integer quantum Hall effect in order to directly measure the electrons' temperature. The data are in excellent agreement with recent theoretical results, including contributions from the triplet channel, for a broad te…
We study numerically the influence of momentum-conserving dephasing on the transport in a disordered chain of scatterers. Loss of phase memory is caused by coupling the transport channels to dephasing reservoirs. In contrast to previously used models, the dephasing reservoirs are linked to the transport channels between the scatterers, and momentum conserving dephasing can be investigated. Our setup provides a model for nanosystems exhibiting conductance quantization at higher temperatures in spite of the presence of phononic interaction. We are able to confirm numerically some theoretical pre…
We investigate the influence of nonstationary 1/f^mu noise, produced by interacting defects, on a quantum two-level system. Adopting a simple phenomenological model for this noise we describe exactly the corresponding dephasing in various regimes. The nonstationarity and pronounced non-Gaussian features of this noise induce new anomalous dephasing scenarii. Beyond a history-dependent critical coupling strength the dephasing time exhibits a strong dependence on the age of the noise and the decay of coherence is not exponential.
A Kramers pair of helical edge states in quantum spin Hall effect (QSHE) is robust against normal dephasing but not robust to spin dephasing. In our work, we provide an effective spin dephasing mechanism in the puddles of two-dimensional (2D) QSHE, which is simulated as quantum dots modeled by 2D massive Dirac Hamiltonian. We demonstrate that the spin dephasing effect can originate from the combination of the Rashba spin-orbit coupling and electron-phonon interaction, which gives rise to inelastic backscattering in edge states within the topological insulator quantum dots, although the time-re…
We argue that the finite temperature dynamics of the integer quantum Hall system is governed by two independent length scales. The consistent scaling description of the transition makes crucial use of two temperature critical exponents, reflecting the interplay between charging effects and interaction-induced dephasing. Experimental implications of the two-scale picture are discussed.
We propose a random matrix theory describing the influence of a time dependent external field on the average magnetoresistance of open quantum dots. The effect is taken into account in all orders of perturbation theory, and the result is applicable to both weak and strong external fields.
Excitonic transport in static disordered one dimensional systems is studied in the presence of thermal fluctuations that are described by the Haken-Strobl-Reineker model. For short times, non-diffusive behavior is observed that can be characterized as the free-particle dynamics in the Anderson localized system. Over longer time scales, the environment-induced dephasing is sufficient to overcome the Anderson localization caused by the disorder and allow for transport to occur which is always seen to be diffusive. In the limiting regimes of weak and strong dephasing quantum master equations are …
We present an analytical scaling theory for localization in a two-dimensional hierarchical network model that is designed to represent phase-coherent electron transport in the quantum-Hall regime. Scaling expressions for both the longitudinal and Hall resistivities are derived. In agreement with recent numerical studies, we find that the Hall resistivity is quantized in the metallic phase but diverges in the insulating phase. This suggests that the characteristics of a quantized Hall insulator can occur only in the presence of a strong dephasing mechanism.
A microscopic theory is used to study the optical properties of semiconductor quantum dots. The dephasing of a coherent excitation and line-shifts of the interband transitions due to carrier-carrier Coulomb interaction and carrier-phonon interaction are determined from a quantum kinetic treatment of correlation processes. We investigate the density dependence of both mechanisms and clarify the importance of various dephasing channels involving the localized and delocalized states of the system.
We study spin polarized transport in silicon germanium nanowires using a semiclassical monte carlo approach. Spin depolarization in the channel is caused due to D'yakonov-Perel (DP) relaxation associated with Rashba spin orbit coupling and due to Elliott- Yafet (EY) relaxation. We investigate the dependence of spin dephasing on germanium mole fraction in silicon germanium nanowires. The spin dephasing lengths decrease with an increase in the germanium mole fraction. We also find that the temperature has a strong influence on the dephasing rate and spin relaxation lengths increase with decrease…
The coupling between single-photon emitters and phonons opens many possibilities to store and transmit quantum properties. In this paper we apply the independent boson model to describe the coupling between an optically driven two-level system and a discrete phonon mode. Tailored optical driving allows not only to generate coherent phonon states, but also to generate coherent superpositions in the form of Schrödinger cat states in the phonon system. We analyze the influence of decay and dephasing of the two-level system on these phonon preparation protocols. We find that the decay transforms t…
We present a theoretical study of the influence of dephasing on shot noise in an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer. In contrast to phenomenological approaches, we employ a microscopic model where dephasing is induced by the fluctuations of a classical potential. This enables us to treat the influence of the environment's fluctuation spectrum on the shot noise. We compare against the results obtained from a simple classical model of incoherent transport, as well as those derived from the phenomenological dephasing terminal approach, arguing that the latter runs into a problem when applied …
We analyze the dissipative dynamics of a two-level quantum system subject to low-frequency, e.g. 1/f noise, motivated by recent experiments with superconducting quantum circuits. We show that the effect of transverse linear coupling of the system to low-frequency noise is equivalent to that of quadratic longitudinal coupling. We further find the decay law of quantum coherent oscillations under the influence of both low- and high-frequency fluctuations, in particular, for the case of comparable rates of relaxation and pure dephasing.
We study dephasing in an electronic Mach-Zehnder (MZ) interferometer based on quantum Hall (QH) edge states by a micromiter-sized Ohmic contact embedded in one of its arms. We find that at the filling factor $ν=1$, as well as in the case where an Ohmic contact is connected to an MZ interfeoremter by a quantum point contact (QPC) that transmits only one electron channel, the phase coherence may not be fully suppressed. Namely, if the voltage bias $Δμ$ and the temperature $T$ are small compared to the charging energy of the Ohmic contact $E_C$, the free fermion picture is manifested, and the vis…
In controlled dephasing as a result of the interaction of a controlled environment (dephasor) and the system under observation (dephasee) the states of the two subsystems are entangled. Using as an example the ``Which Path Detector'', we discuss how the entanglement influences the controlled dephasing. In particular, we calculate the suppression $ν$ of A-B oscillations as a function of the bias $eV$ applied to the QPC and the coupling $Γ$ of the QD to the leads. At low temperatures the entanglement produces a smooth crossover from $ν\propto (eV/Γ)^2$, when $eV \ll Γ$ to $ν\propto eV/Γ$, for $e…
The effect of dephasing on electron transport through a benzene molecule is carefully examined using a phenomenological model introduced by Büttiker. Within a tight-binding framework all the calculations are performed based on the Green's function formalism. We investigate the influence of dephasing on transmission probability and current-voltage characteristics for three different configurations ({\em ortho}, {\em meta} and {\em para}) of the molecular system depending on the locations of two contacting leads. The presence of dephasing provides a significant change in the spectral properties …
We consider the effect of dephasing on a quantum dot which injects single electrons on a chiral edge channel of the quantum Hall effect. Dephasing is described by the coupling of the dot to a bosonic bath which represents the electromagnetic environment. Using the input-output formalism of quantum optics, we derive the density matrix of the edge degrees of freedom. Results are illustrated by computing the zero frequency current-current correlations when two such single electron emitters achieve a collision at the location of a quantum point contact, in the same spirit as the Hong Ou Mandel exp…
We analyze the conductance fluctuations observed in the quantum Hall regime for a bulk two-dimensional electron system in a Corbino geometry. We find that characteristics like the power spectral density and the temperature dependence agree well with simple expectations for universal conductance fluctuations in metals, while the observed amplitude is reduced. In addition, the dephasing length $L_Φ\propto T^{-1/2}$, which governs the temperature dependence of the fluctuations, is surprisingly different from the scaling length $L_{sc}\propto T^{-1}$ governing the width of the quantum Hall plateau…
To understand the seemingly absent temperature dependence in the conductance of two-dimensional topological insulator edge states, we perform a numerical study which identifies the quantitative influence of the combined effect of dephasing and elastic scattering in charge puddles close to the edges. We show that this mechanism may be responsible for the experimental signatures in HgTe/CdTe quantum wells if the puddles in the samples are large and weakly coupled to the sample edges. We propose experiments on artificial puddles which allow to verify this hypothesis and to extract the real dephas…
We investigate the influence of an external magnetic field on spin phase relaxation of single electrons in semiconductor quantum dots induced by the hyperfine interaction. The basic decay mechanism is attributed to the dispersion of local effective nuclear fields over the ensemble of quantum dots. The characteristics of electron spin dephasing is analyzed by taking an average over the nuclear spin distribution. We find that the dephasing rate can be estimated as a spin precession frequency caused primarily by the mean value of the local nuclear magnetic field. Furthermore, it is shown that the…
Motivated by recent experiments with Josephson-junction circuits, we analyze the influence of various noise sources on the dynamics of two-level systems at optimal operation points where the linear coupling to low-frequency fluctuations is suppressed. We study the decoherence due to nonlinear (quadratic) coupling, focusing on the experimentally relevant 1/f and Ohmic noise power spectra. For 1/f noise strong higher-order effects influence the evolution.
We investigate the influence of an external magnetic field on the magnitude and dephasing of the transient lateral photovoltaic effect (T-LPE) in lithographically patterned Co lines of widths of a few microns grown over naturally passivated p-type Si(100). The T-LPE peak-to-peak magnitude and dephasing, measured by lock-in or through the characteristic time of laser OFF exponential relaxation, exhibit a notable influence of the magnetization direction of the ferromagnetic overlayer. We show experimentally and by numerical simulations that the T-LPE magnitude is determined by the Co anisotropic…
It has been shown that the geometric Berry-phase shift acquired by the components of the light hole (LH) spinor during an adiabatic collision is equal to the angular distance traveled by the wave vector. For LH, geometric dephasing leads to equality between angular and crystal momentum relaxation time. I will show that the same mechanism is completely ineffective for heavy and split-off holes in bulk crystals, and in electron QSLs in spherical nanostructures. This non-model result suggests that these carriers may be considered as the stern candidates for implementation of dissipationless spin …
A study is presented concerning the influence of flicker noise in the junction transparency on coherent transport in Andreev states. The amount of dephasing is estimated for a microwave-activated quantum interferometer. Possibilities of experimentally investigating the coupling between a superconducting quantum point contact and its electromagnetic environment are discussed.
We investigate the effects of dephasing on the current statistics of mesoscopic conductors with a recently developed statistical model, focusing in particular on mesoscopic cavities and Aharonov-Bohm rings. For such devices, we analyze the influence of an arbitrary degree of decoherence on the cumulants of the current. We recover known results for the limiting cases of fully coherent and totally incoherent transport and are able to obtain detailed information on the intermediate regime of partial coherence for a varying number of open channels. We show that dephasing affects the average curren…
We analyze dephasing in a model system where electrons tunnel sequentially through a symmetric interference setup consisting of two single-level quantum dots. Depending on the phase difference between the two tunneling paths, this may result in perfect destructive interference. However, if the dots are coupled to a bath, it may act as a which-way detector, leading to partial suppression of the phase-coherence and the reappearance of a finite tunneling current. In our approach, the tunneling is treated in leading order whereas coupling to the bath is kept to all orders (using P(E) theory). We d…
Using three-pulse four-wave-mixing optical spectroscopy, we study the ultrafast dynamics of the quantum Hall system. We observe striking differences as compared to an undoped system, where the 2D electron gas is absent. In particular, we observe a large off-resonant signal with strong oscillations. Using a microscopic theory, we show that these are due to many-particle coherences created by interactions between photoexcited carriers and collective excitations of the 2D electron gas. We extract quantitative information about the dephasing and interference of these coherences.
We investigate low-temperature dephasing in several model systems, where a quantum degree of freedom is coupled to a bath. Dephasing, defined as the decay of the coherence of inital non-equilibrium states, also influences the dynamics of equilibrium correlation and response functions, as well as static interference effects. In particular in the latter case dephasing should be distinguished from renormalization effects. For illustration, and because of its relevance for quantum state engineering in dissipative environments, we first reconsider dephasing in spin-boson models. Next we review Cald…
First principles calculations show that electric fields applied to ferromagnets generate spin currents flowing perpendicularly to the electric field. Reduced symmetry in these ferromagnets enables a wide variety of such spin currents. However, the total spin current is approximately the sum of a magnetization-independent spin Hall current and an anisotropic spin anomalous Hall current. Intrinsic spin currents are not subject to dephasing, enabling their spin polarizations to be misaligned with the magnetization, which enables the magnetization-independent spin Hall effect. The spin Hall conduc…
Inertial effects play an important role in classical mechanics but have been largely overlooked in quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, the analogy between inertial forces on mass particles and electromagnetic forces on charged particles is not new. In this paper, we consider a rotating non-interacting planar two-dimensional electron gas with a perpendicular uniform magnetic field and investigate the effects of the rotation in the Hall conductivi
In a two dimensional electron gas with Rashba spin-orbit coupling, the external electric field may cause a spin Hall current in the direction perpendicular to the electric field. This effect was called the intrinsic spin Hall effect. In this paper, we investigate the influences of spin accumulation on this intrinsic spin Hall effect. We show that due to the existence of boundaries in a real sample, the spin Hall current generated by the intrinsic spin Hall effect will cause spin accumulation near the edges of the sample, and in the presence of spin accumulation, the spin Hall conductivity will…
Weak localization was observed and determined in a black phosphorus (bP) field-effect transistor 65 nm thick. The weak localization behaviour was found to be in excellent agreement with the Hikami-Larkin-Nagaoka model for fields up to 1~T, from which characteristic scattering lengths could be inferred. The dephasing length $L_ϕ$ was found to increase linearly with increasing hole density attaining a maximum value of 55 nm at a hole density of approximately $10^{13} cm^{-2}$ inferred from the Hall effect. The temperature dependence of $L_ϕ$ was also investigated and above 1~K, it was found to d…
We investigate the influence of electron-phonon interactions on the dynamical properties of a quantum-dot-cavity QED system. We show that non-Markovian effects in the phonon reservoir lead to strong changes in the dynamics, arising from photon-assisted dephasing processes, not present in Markovian treatments. A pronounced consequence is the emergence of a phonon induced spectral asymmetry when detuning the cavity from the quantum-dot resonance. The asymmetry can only be explained when considering the polaritonic quasi-particle nature of the quantum-dot-cavity system. Furthermore, a temperature…
We present the theory and numerical evaluations of the backscattering rate determined by acceptor holes or Mn spins in HgTe and (Hg,Mn)Te quantum wells in the quantum spin Hall regime. The role of anisotropic s-p and sp-d exchange interactions, Kondo coupling, Luttinger liquid effects, precessional dephasing, and bound magnetic polarons is quantified. The determined magnitude and temperature dependence of conductance are in accord with experimental results for HgTe and (Hg,Mn)Te quantum wells.
We address the recently-observed unexpected behavior of Aharonov-Bohm oscillations in the electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer that was realized experimentally in a quantum Hall system [1]. We argue that the measured lobe structure in the visibility of oscillations and the phase rigidity result from a strong long-range interaction between two adjacent counter-propagating edge states, which leads to a resonant scattering of plasmons. The visibility and phase shift, which we expressed in terms of the transmission coefficient for plasmons, can be used for the tomography of edge states.
We investigate nonlinear transport in electronic Fabry-Perot interferometers in the integer quantum Hall regime. For interferometers sufficiently large that Coulomb blockade effects are absent, a checkerboard-like pattern of conductance oscillations as a function of dc bias and perpendicular magnetic field is observed. Edge-state velocities extracted from the checkerboard data are compared to model calculations and found to be consistent with a crossover from skipping orbits at low fields to E x B drift at high fields. Suppression of visibility as a function of bias and magnetic field is accou…
We analyze the influence of a dissipative environment on geometric phases in a quantum system subject to non-adiabatic evolution. We find dissipative contributions to the acquired phase and modification of dephasing, considering the cases of weak short-correlated noise as well as of slow quasi-stationary noise. Motivated by recent experiments, we find the leading non-adiabatic corrections to the results, known for the adiabatic limit.
