Nonequilibrium Dephasing in an Electronic Mach-Zehnder Interferometer

Seok-Chan Youn, Hyun-Woo Lee, H. -S. Sim

Published 2007-12-13, updated 2008-05-17Version 3

We study nonequilibrium dephasing in an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer. We demonstrate that the shot noise at the beam splitter of the interferometer generates an ensemble of nonequilibrium electron density configurations and that electron interactions induce configuration-specific phase shifts of an interfering electron. The resulting dephasing exhibits two characteristic features, a lobe pattern in the visibility and phase jumps of $\pi$, in good agreement with experimental data.