Dephasing of an electronic two-path interferometer

Abstract

This Rapid Communication was motivated by the quest for observing interference of fractionally charged quasiparticles. Here, we study the behavior of an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer at the integer quantum Hall effect regime at filling factors greater than 1. Both the visibility and the velocity were measured and found to be highly correlated as a function of the filling factor. As the filling factor approached unity, the visibility quenched, not to recover for filling factors smaller than unity. Alternatively, the velocity saturated around a minimal value at the unity filling factor. We highlight the significant role interactions between the interfering edge and the bulk play as well as that of the defining potential at the edge. Shot-noise measurements suggest that phase averaging (due to phase randomization), rather than single-particle decoherence, is likely to be the cause of the dephasing in the fractional regime.