Abstract

Recent advances in material growth and lithography have made it possible to fabricate electronic structures with dimensions smaller than the so-called phase coherence length of electrons. In such structures electrons propagate without making any phase breaking collisions, hence the phases of the electron waves entering and leaving the structure are deterministically related. This is analogous to the situation in photonics, and one can envision fabricating electron waveguides. This opens up the possibility of creating new and novel devices drawing parallels from photonic devices and many such proposals have already been made [1], [2]. In this work we experimentally studied one such device, which is the analog of the Y branch in integrated optics also known as the digital switch [3].

© 1994 Optical Society of America