Electronic Mach-Zehnder quantum eraser
Kicheon Kang · Physical Review B · 2007
We propose a solid-state quantum eraser in which electrons are injected into a mesoscopic conductor in the quantum Hall regime. The conductor is composed of a two-path interferometer, an electronic analog of the optical Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and a quantum point-contact detector capacitively coupled to the interferometer. While the interference of the output current at the interferometer is suppressed by the which-path information, we show that the which-path information is erased and the interference reappears in the cross-correlation measurement between the interferometer and the detector output leads. We also investigate a modified setup in which the detector is replaced by a two-path interferometer. We show that the distinguishability of the path and the visibility of joint detection can be controlled in a continuous manner and satisfy a complementarity relation for the entangled electrons.