Low-temperature dephasing in irradiated metallic wires

We present phase coherence time measurements in quasi-one-dimensional Ag wires implanted with Ag+ ions with an energy of 100 keV. The measurements have been carried out in the temperature range from 100 mK up to 10 K; this has to be compared with the Kondo temperature of iron in silver, i.e., T-K(Ag/Fe)approximate to 4 K, used in recent experiments on dephasing in Kondo systems [F. Mallet , Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 226804 (2006); G. M. Alzoubi and N. O. Birge, ibid. 97, 226803 (2006)]. We show that the phase coherence time is not affected by the implantation procedure, clearly proving that ion implantation process by itself does not lead to any extra dephasing at low temperature.