Journal article

Chaos, coherence, and the double-slit experiment.

  • Jacquod P Département de Physique Théorique, Université de Genève, CH-1211 Genève 4, Switzerland.
  • 2005-12-31
Published in:
  • Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics. - 2005
English We investigate the influence that classical dynamics has on interference patterns in coherence experiments. We calculate the time-integrated probability current through an absorbing screen and the conductance through a doubly connected ballistic cavity, both in an Aharonov-Bohm geometry with forward scattering only. We show how interference fringes in the probability current generically disappear in the case of a chaotic system with small openings, and how they may persist in the case of an integrable cavity. Simultaneously, the typical, sample dependent amplitude of the flux-sensitive g(phi) part of the conductance survives in all cases, and becomes universal in the case of a chaotic cavity. In the presence of dephasing by fluctuations of the electric potential in one arm of the Aharonov-Bohm loop, we find an exponential damping of the flux-dependent part of the conductance, g(phi) proportional exp[-tauL/tauphi, in term of the traversal time tauL through the arm and the dephasing time tauphi. This extends previous works on dephasing in ballistic systems to the case of many conducting channels.
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  • English
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green
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https://sonar.ch/global/documents/191625
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