Channel Mixing and Spin Transport in the Integer Quantum Hall Effect

Edge states are 1-dimensional transport channels, emerging in quantum wells in the integer Quantum Hall regime, with remarkable properties of chirality and quantum coherence. In this thesis we present the idea of manipulating electronic currents mixed over two co-propagating edge channels, and discuss its potential impact for quantum interferometry and transport of spin-qubit states. We introduce the characteristics of edge states and evaluate the effect of local, non adiabatic potentials and their efficiency to transfer charge between two channels. We show that sharp potential variations whose energies are smaller than the Landau gap provide weak mixing, and we identify some experimental strategies that can achieve good mixing percentages. We develop numerical techniques of simulation to model existing experiments that employ mixed edge channels, and analytical methods in order to treat the effect of Coulomb interactions between edge states in a future spin-interferometry experiment.