Quantum Hall Valley Splitters and a Tunable Mach-Zehnder Interferometer in Graphene

Abstract

Graphene is a very promising test bed for the field of electron quantum optics. However, a fully tunable and coherent electronic beam splitter is still missing. We report the demonstration of electronic beam splitters in graphene that couple quantum Hall edge channels having opposite valley polarizations. The electronic transmission of our beam splitters can be tuned from zero to near unity. By independently setting the beam splitters at the two corners of a graphene p-n junction to intermediate transmissions, we realize a fully tunable electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer. This tunability allows us to unambiguously identify the quantum interferences due to the Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and to study their dependence with the beam-splitter transmission and the interferometer bias voltage. The comparison with conventional semiconductor interferometers points toward universal processes driving the quantum decoherence in those two different 2D systems, with graphene being much more robust to their effect.