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Time-resolved Coulomb collision of single electrons

Nature Nanotechnology volume 18, pages 727–732 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

A series of recent experiments have shown that collision of ballistic electrons in semiconductors can be used to probe the indistinguishability of single-electron wavepackets. Perhaps surprisingly, their Coulomb interaction has not been seen due to screening. Here we show Coulomb-dominated collision of high-energy single electrons in counter-propagating ballistic edge states, probed by measuring partition statistics while adjusting the collision timing. Although some experimental data suggest antibunching behaviour, we show that this is not due to quantum statistics but to strong repulsive Coulomb interactions. This prevents the wavepacket overlap needed for fermionic exchange statistics but suggests new ways to utilize Coulomb interactions: microscopically isolated and time-resolved interactions between ballistic electrons can enable the use of the Coulomb interaction for high-speed sensing or gate operations on flying electron qubits.

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Fig. 1: Idealized electronic wavepacket collider.
Fig. 2: Electron collider implemented with high-energy single electrons.
Fig. 3: Current imbalance, current noise suppression and partition statistics.
Fig. 4: Trajectory of interacting electrons and the resulting partition statistics.

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Data availability

The experimental data that support the findings of this study are available in the SEQUOIA community repository at https://zenodo.org/communities/sequoia/at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7643880. Calculation details are provided in Supplementary Information.

Code availability

The code used for analyses and figures is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge experimental assistance from N. Johnson and S. Norimoto. We acknowledge use of software developed by F. Ahlers. W.P. and H.-S.S. acknowledge support by Korea NRF via the SRC Center for Quantum Coherence in Condensed Matter (grant number 2016R1A5A1008184 and RS-2023-00207732). This work was supported by the UK government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and from the Joint Research Projects 17FUN04 SEQUOIA from the European Metrology Programme for Innovation and Research (EMPIR) co-financed by the participating states and from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. S.R. acknowledges support from the Maria de Maeztu Program for Units of Excellence number MDM2017-0711 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, UK

    J. D. Fletcher, P. See & M. Kataoka

  2. Department of Physics, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Korea

    W. Park & H.-S. Sim

  3. Instituto de Física Interdisciplinary Sistemas Complejos IFISC (CSIC-UIB), Palma de Mallorca, Spain

    S. Ryu

  4. Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    J. P. Griffiths, G. A. C. Jones, I. Farrer & D. A. Ritchie

  5. Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    I. Farrer

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  1. J. D. Fletcher
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Contributions

J.D.F. designed and developed the measurement system and experimental methodology; with input from P.S. and M.K., designed samples; performed experiment, data acquisition and analysis; with W.P., helped to explore numerical calculation of particle trajectories and comparison with data. W.P. developed a method to calculate classical particle trajectories; performed numerical calculations to compare with experimental data; investigated methods to establish the validity of the classical model. S.R. developed a one-dimensional quantum collision model (published separately) and helped to develop a classical method of calculation of particle trajectories and advised on its realm of validity. P.S. developed fabrication techniques for electron pump devices; and fabricated samples used in this paper and preliminary batches of prototype electron colliders. J.P.G. and G.A.C.J. provided electron beam sample patterning. I.F. and D.A.R. provided wafers for the device substrates. H.-S.S. oversaw the development of both quantum and classical models of particle collision. M.K. directed this research project; supported J.D.F. for experiments and data analysis, and suggested the underpinning mechanisms that result in positive and negative correlation in two-electron transmission/reflection observed experimentally. The manuscript was written by J.D.F., M.K., W.P., S.R. and H.-S.S. with review by other authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to J. D. Fletcher, W. Park, H.-S. Sim or M. Kataoka.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Nanotechnology thanks Christian Flindt and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Theoretical and experimental details.

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Fletcher, J.D., Park, W., Ryu, S. et al. Time-resolved Coulomb collision of single electrons. Nat. Nanotechnol. 18, 727–732 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-023-01369-4

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