Solid State and Optics Seminar

Wednesday, February 8, 2006

1:00 p.m.

107 Mason Lab

"A Fermion Interferometer Operated as a Transistor"

Dr. Bernard Yurke
Bell Laboratories,
Lucent Technologies

Abstract

In order to get some insight into the performance limits quantum mechanics places on transistors, the performance of a fermion Mach-Zehnder interferometer operated as a transistor is analyzed. It is found that the device can reach the uncertainty bound imposed on phase-insensitive linear amplifiers. This noise limit is achieved when the shot noise and back-action noise contributions to the output noise become equal.

Host: Steve Girvin