Surface-acoustic-wave single-electron interferometry

We propose an experiment to observe interference of a single electron as it is transported along two parallel quasi-one-dimensional channels trapped in a single minimum of a traveling periodic electric field. The experimental device is a modification of the surface-acoustic-wave-based quantum processor. Interference is achieved by creating a superposition of spatial wave functions between the two channels and inducing a relative phase shift via either a transverse electric field or a magnetic field. The interference can be used to estimate the decoherence time of an electron in this type of solid-state device