Thermal Enhancement of Interference Effects in Quantum Point Contacts

Abstract

We study an electron interferometer formed with a quantum point contact and a scanning probe tip in a two-dimensional electron gas. The images giving the conductance as a function of the tip position exhibit fringes spaced by half the Fermi wavelength. For a contact opened at the edges of a quantized conductance plateau, the fringes are enhanced as the temperature T increases and can persist beyond the thermal length l_T. This unusual effect is explained assuming a simplified model: The fringes are mainly given by a contribution which vanishes when T -> 0 and has a decay characterized by a T-independent scale.