Quantum Interference and Inelastic Scattering in a Model Which-Way Device

A which-way device is one which is designed to detect which of 2 paths is taken by a quantum particle, whether Schr\"odinger's cat is dead or alive. One possible such device is represented by an Aharonov-Bohm ring with a quantum dot on one branch. A charged cantilever or spring is brought close to the dot as a detector of the presence of an electron. The conventional view of such a device is that any change in the state of the cantilever implies a change in the electron state which will in turn destroy the interference effects. In this paper we show that it is in fact possible to change the state of the oscillator while preserving the quantum interference phenomenon.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figures, Localisation 2002 Toky

An Electromechanical Which-Path Interferometer

We investigate the possibility of an electromechanical which-path interferometer, in which electrons travelling through an Aharonov-Bohm ring incorporating a quantum dot in one of the arms are dephased by an interaction with the fundamental flexural mode of a radio frequency cantilever. The cantilever is positioned so that its tip lies just above the dot and a bias is applied so that an electric field exists between the dot and the tip. This electric field is modified when an additional electron hops onto the dot, coupling the flexural mode of the cantilever and the microscopic electronic degrees of freedom. We analyze the transmission properties of this system and the dependence of interference fringe visibility on the cantilever-dot coupling and on the mechanical properties of the cantilever. The fringes are progressively destroyed as the interaction with the cantilever is turned up, in part due to dephasing arising from the entanglement of the electron and cantilever states and also due to the thermal smearing that results from fluctuations in the state of the cantilever. When the dwell time of the electron on the dot is comparable to or longer than the cantilever period, we find coherent features in the transmission amplitude. These features are washed out when the cantilever is decohered by its coupling to the environment.Comment: 38 pages, 7 figure

Propagating and evanescent waves in absorbing media

We compare the behavior of propagating and evanescent light waves in absorbing media with that of electrons in the presence of inelastic scattering. The imaginary part of the dielectric constant results primarily in an exponential decay of a propagating wave, but a phase shift for an evanescent wave. We then describe how the scattering of quantum particles out of a particular coherent channel can be modeled by introducing an imaginary part to the potential in analogy with the optical case. The imaginary part of the potential causes additional scattering which can dominate and actually prevent absorption of the wave for large enough values of the imaginary part. We also discuss the problem of maximizing the absorption of a wave and point out that the existence of a bound state greatly aids absorption. We illustrate this point by considering the absorption of light at the surface of a metal.Comment: Brief Review, to appear in the American Journal of Physics, http://www.kzoo.edu/ajp

Chiral and Continuum Extrapolation of Partially-Quenched Hadron Masses

Using the finite-range regularisation (FRR) of chiral effective field theory, the chiral extrapolation formula for the vector meson mass is derived for the case of partially-quenched QCD. We re-analyse the dynamical fermion QCD data for the vector meson mass from the CP-PACS collaboration. A global fit, including finite lattice spacing effects, of all 16 of their ensembles is performed. We study the FRR method together with a naive polynomial approach and find excellent agreement ~1% with the experimental value of M_rho from the former approach. These results are extended to the case of the nucleon mass.Comment: 6 pages, Contribution to Lattice2005, PoS styl