We present an all-electron calculation of the hyperfine parameters for conduction electrons in Si, showing that: (i) all parameters scale linearly with the spin density at a $^{29}$Si site; (ii) the isotropic term is over 30 times larger than the anisotropic part; (iii) conduction electron charge density at a Si nucleus is consistent with experimental estimates; (iv) Overhauser fields in natural Si quantum dots (QDs) are two orders of magnitude smaller than in GaAs QDs. This reinforces the outstanding performance of Si in keeping spin coherence and opens access to reliable quantitative information aiming at spintronic applications.
Hole spin qubits are frontrunner platforms for scalable quantum computers, but state-of-the-art devices suffer from noise originating from the hyperfine interactions with nuclear defects. We show that these interactions have a highly tunable anisotropy that is controlled by device design and external electric fields. This tunability enables sweet spots where the hyperfine noise is suppressed by an order of magnitude and is comparable to isotopically purified materials. We identify surprisingly simple designs where the qubits are highly coherent and are largely unaffected by both charge and hyp…
We investigate hyperfine induced electron spin and entanglement dynamics in a system of two quantum dot spin qubits. We focus on the situation of zero external magnetic field and concentrate on approximation-free theoretical methods. We give an exact solution of the model for homogeneous hyperfine coupling constants (with all coupling coefficients being equal) and varying exchange coupling, and we derive the dynamics therefrom. After describing and explaining the basic dynamical properties, the decoherence time is calculated from the results of a detailed investigation of the short time electr…
Understanding (and controlling) hyperfine interactions in semiconductor nanostructures is important for fundamental studies of material properties as well as for quantum information processing with electron, hole, and nuclear-spin states. Through a combination of first-principles density-functional theory (DFT) and $\mathbf{k}\cdot\mathbf{p}$ theory, we have calculated hyperfine tensors for electrons and holes in GaAs and crystalline silicon. Accounting for relativistic effects near the nuclear core, we find contact hyperfine interactions for electrons in GaAs that are consistent with Knight-s…
We present two strategies for performing two-qubit operations on the electron spins of an exchange-coupled pair of phosphorus donors in silicon, using the ability to set the donor nuclear spins in arbitrary states. The effective magnetic detuning of the two electron qubits is provided by the hyperfine interaction when the $^{31}$P nuclei are prepared in opposite spin states. This can be exploited to switch on and off SWAP operations with modest tuning of the electron exchange interaction. Furthermore, the hyperfine detuning enables high-fidelity conditional rotation gates based on selective re…
We consider a system of two strongly coupled electron spins in zero magnetic field, each of which is interacting with an individual bath of nuclear spins via the hyperfine interaction. Applying the long spin approximation (LSA) introduced in Europhys. Lett. 95, 47009 (here each bath is replaced by a single long spin), we numerically study the electron spin and entanglement dynamics. We demonstrate that the decoherence time is scaling with the bath size according to a power law. As expected, the decaying part of the dynamics decreases with increasing bath polarization. However, surprisingly it …
We examine the logical qubit system of a pair of electron spins in double quantum dots. Each electron experiences a different hyperfine interaction with the local nuclei of the lattice, leading to a relative phase difference, and thus decoherence. Methods such as nuclei polarization, state narrowing, and spin-echo pulses have been proposed to delay decoherence. Instead we propose to suppress hyperfine dephasing by adiabatic rotation of the dots in real space, leading to the same average hyperfine interaction. We show that the additional effects due to the motion in the presence of spin-orbit c…
We experimentally study the coupling of Group V donor spins in silicon to mechanical strain, and measure strain-induced frequency shifts which are linear in strain, in contrast to the quadratic dependence predicted by the valley repopulation model (VRM), and therefore orders of magnitude greater than that predicted by the VRM for small strains $|\varepsilon| < 10^{-5}$. Through both tight-binding and first principles calculations we find that these shifts arise from a linear tuning of the donor hyperfine interaction term by the hydrostatic component of strain and achieve semi-quantitative agre…
We measure the strength and the sign of hyperfine interaction of a heavy-hole with nuclear spins in single self-assembled quantum dots. Our experiments utilize the locking of a quantum dot resonance to an incident laser frequency to generate nuclear spin polarization. By monitoring the resulting Overhauser shift of optical transitions that are split either by electron or exciton Zeeman energy with respect to the locked transition using resonance fluorescence, we find that the ratio of the heavy-hole and electron hyperfine interactions is -0.09 +/- 0.02 in two QDs. Since hyperfine interactions …
We theoretically investigate the spin dynamics of a heavy hole confined to an unstrained III-V semiconductor quantum dot and interacting with a narrowed nuclear-spin bath. We show that band hybridization leads to an exponential decay of hole-spin superpositions due to hyperfine-mediated nuclear pair flips, and that the accordant single-hole-spin decoherence time T2 can be tuned over many orders of magnitude by changing external parameters. In particular, we show that, under experimentally accessible conditions, it is possible to suppress hyperfine-mediated nuclear-pair-flip processes so strong…
The spin interaction of a hole confined in a quantum dot with the surrounding nuclei is described in terms of an effective magnetic field. We show that, in contrast to the Fermi contact hyperfine interaction for conduction electrons, the dipole-dipole hyperfine interaction is anisotropic for a hole, for both pure or mixed hole states. We evaluate the coupling constants of the hole-nuclear interaction and demonstrate that they are only one order of magnitude smaller than the coupling constants of the electron-nuclear interaction. We also study, theoretically, the hole spin dephasing of an ensem…
We investigate the influence of an external magnetic field on spin phase relaxation of single electrons in semiconductor quantum dots induced by the hyperfine interaction. The basic decay mechanism is attributed to the dispersion of local effective nuclear fields over the ensemble of quantum dots. The characteristics of electron spin dephasing is analyzed by taking an average over the nuclear spin distribution. We find that the dephasing rate can be estimated as a spin precession frequency caused primarily by the mean value of the local nuclear magnetic field. Furthermore, it is shown that the…
Progress with quantum technology has for a large part been realized with the nitrogen-vacancy centre in diamond. Part of its properties, however, are nonideal and this drives research into other spin-active crystal defects. Several of these come with much stronger energy scales for spin-orbit and hyperfine coupling, but how this affects their spin coherence is little explored. Vanadium in silicon carbide is such a system, with technological interest for its optical emission at a telecom wavelength and compatibility with semiconductor industry. Here we show coherent spin dynamics of an ensemble…
We achieve direct detection of electron hyperfine shifts in individual CdTe/ZnTe quantum dots. For the previously inaccessible regime of strong magnetic fields $B_z\gtrsim0.1$ T, we demonstrate robust polarization of a few-hundred-particle nuclear spin bath, with optical initialization time of $\sim$ 1 ms and polarization lifetime exceeding $\sim$ 1 s. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy of individual dots reveals strong electron-nuclear interactions characterized by the Knight fields $|B_e|\gtrsim50$ mT, an order of magnitude stronger than in III-V semiconductor quantum dots. Our studies …
A recently discovered mechanism of electric dipole spin resonance, mediated by the hyperfine interaction, is investigated experimentally and theoretically. The effect is studied using a spin-selective transition in a GaAs double quantum dot. The resonant frequency is sensitive to the instantaneous hyperfine effective field, revealing a nuclear polarization created by driving the resonance. A device incorporating a micromagnet exhibits a magnetic field difference between dots, allowing electrons in either dot to be addressed selectively. An unexplained additional signal at half the resonant fre…
We investigate theoretically the hyperfine-induced dephasing of two-electron-spin states in a double quantum dot with a finite singlet-triplet splitting J. In particular, we derive an effective pure dephasing Hamiltonian, which is valid when the hyperfine-induced mixing is suppressed due to the relatively large J and the external magnetic field. Using both a quantum theory based on resummation of ring diagrams and semiclassical methods, we identify the dominant dephasing processes in regimes defined by values of the external magnetic field, the singlet-triplet splitting, and inhomogeneity in t…
The nuclear spin of a phosphorus atom in silicon has been used as a quantum bit in various quantum-information experiments. It has been proposed that this nuclear-spin qubit can be efficiently controlled by an ac electric field, when embedded in a two electron dot-donor setup subject to intrinsic or artificial spin-orbit interaction. Exposing the qubit to control electric fields in that setup exposes it to electric noise as well. In this work, we describe the effect of electric noise mechanisms, such as phonons and $1/f$ charge noise, and estimate the corresponding decoherence time scales of t…
We consider the hyperfine-mediated transition rate between Zeeman split spin states of the lowest orbital level in a GaAs quantum dot. We separate the hyperfine Hamiltonian into a part which is diagonal in the orbital states and another one which mixes different orbitals. The diagonal part gives rise to an effective (internal) magnetic field which, in addition to an external magnetic field, determines the Zeeman splitting. Spin-flip transitions in the dots are induced by the orbital mixing part accompanied by an emission of a phonon. We evaluate the rate for different regimes of applied magnet…
We analyze the low-energy spectrum of a two-electron double quantum dot under a potential bias in the presence of an external magnetic field. We focus on the regime of spin blockade, taking into account the spin orbit interaction and hyperfine coupling of electron and nuclear spins. Starting from a model for two interacting electrons in a double dot, we derive a perturbative, effective two-level Hamiltonian in the vicinity of an avoided crossing between singlet and triplet levels, which are coupled by the spin-orbit and hyperfine interactions. We evaluate the level splitting at the anticrossin…
Hyperfine interaction (HFI) in carbon nanotube and graphene quantum dots is due to the presence of 13C atoms. We theoretically show that in these structures the short-range nature of the HFI gives rise to a coupling between the valley degree of freedom of the electron and the nuclear spin, in addition to the usual electron spin-nuclear spin coupling. We predict that this property of the HFI affects the Pauli blockade transport in carbon-based double quantum dots. In particular, we show that transport is blocked only if both the spin and the valley degeneracies of the quantum dot levels are lif…
We quantify the contributions of hyperfine and spin-orbit mediated singlet-triplet mixing in weakly coupled InAs quantum dots by electron transport spectroscopy in the Pauli spin blockade regime. In contrast to double dots in GaAs, the spin-orbit coupling is found to be more than two orders of magnitudes larger than the hyperfine mixing energy. It is already effective at magnetic fields of a few mT, where deviations from hyperfine mixing are observed.
Spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ $^{119}$Sn nuclei in a silicon semiconductor could make excellent qubits. Nuclear spins in silicon are known to have long coherence times. Tin is isoelectronic with silicon, so we expect electrons can easily shuttle from one Sn atom to another to propagate quantum information via a hyperfine interaction that we predict, from all-electron linearized augmented plane wave density functional theory calculations, to be roughly ten times larger than intrinsic $^{29}$Si. A hyperfine-induced electro-nuclear controlled-phase (e-n-CPhase) gate operation, generated (up to local rotatio…
We theoretically study the interplay of spin-orbit and hyperfine interactions in dynamical nuclear polarization in two-electron semiconductor double quantum dots near the singlet $(S)$ - triplet $(T_+)$ anticrossing. The goal of the scheme under study is to extend the singlet $(S)$ - triplet $(T_0)$ qubit decoherence time $T_2^{*}$ by dynamically transferring the polarization from the electron spins to the nuclear spins. This polarization transfer is achieved by cycling the electron spins over the $S-T_+$ anticrossing. Here, we investigate, both quantitatively and qualitatively, how this hyper…
We expand on previous work that treats relaxation physics of low-lying excited states in ideal, single electron, silicon quantum dots in the context of quantum computing. These states are of three types: orbital, valley, and spin. The relaxation times depend sensitively on system parameters such as the dot size and the external magnetic field. Generally, however, orbital relaxation times are short in strained silicon (from a tenth of a microsecond to picoseconds), spin relaxation times are long (microseconds to greater than seconds), while valley relaxation times are expected to lie in between…
We measure the dynamics of nuclear spins in a self-assembled quantum dot at a magnetic field of 5 Tesla and identify two distinct mechanisms responsible for the decay of the Overhauser field. We attribute a temperature-independent decay which lasts ~100 seconds to intra-dot diffusion induced by hyperfine-mediated indirect nuclear spin interaction. In addition, we observe a gate-voltage and temperature dependent decay stemming from co-tunneling mediated nuclear spin flip processes. By adjusting the gate-voltage and lowering the electron temperature to ~200 milliKelvin, we prolong the correspond…
Using the Algebraic Bethe Ansatz in conjunction with a simple Monte Carlo sampling technique, we study the problem of the decoherence of a central spin coupled to a nuclear spin bath. We describe in detail the full crossover from strong to weak external magnetic field field, a limit where a large non-decaying coherence factor is found. This feature is explained by Bose-Einstein-condensate-like physics which also allows us to argue that the corresponding zero frequency peak would not be broadened by statistical or ensemble averaging.
We theoretically consider the effect of strain on the spin dynamics of a single heavy-hole (HH) confined to a self-assembled quantum dot and interacting with the surrounding nuclei via hyperfine interaction. Confinement and strain hybridize the HH states, which show an exponential decay for a narrowed nuclear spin bath. For different strain configurations within the dot, the dependence of the spin decoherence time $T_2$ on external parameters is shifted and the non-monotonic dependence of the peak is altered. Application of external strain yields considerable shifts in the dependence of $T_2$ …
We analytically calculate the nuclear-spin interactions of a single electron confined to a carbon nanotube or graphene quantum dot. While the conduction-band states in graphene are p-type, the accordant states in a carbon nanotube are sp-hybridized due to curvature. This leads to an interesting interplay between isotropic and anisotropic hyperfine interactions. By using only analytical methods, we are able to show how the interaction strength depends on important physical parameters, such as curvature and isotope abundances. We show that for the investigated carbon structures, the 13C hyperfin…
We present a complete theoretical treatment of Stark effects in doped silicon, whose predictions are supported by experimental measurements. A multi-valley effective mass theory, dealing non-perturbatively with valley-orbit interactions induced by a donor-dependent central cell potential, allows us to obtain a very reliable picture of the donor wave function within a relatively simple framework. Variational optimization of the 1s donor binding energies calculated with a new trial wave function, in a pseudopotential with two fitting parameters, allows an accurate match of the experimentally det…
We formulate the multi-band kp theory of hyperfine interactions for semiconductor nanostructures in the envelope function approximation. We apply this theoretical description to the fluctuations of the longitudinal and transverse Overhauser field experienced by a hole for a range of InGaAs quantum dots of various compositions and geometries. We find that for a wide range of values of $d$-shell admixture to atomic states forming the top of the valence band, the transverse Overhauser field caused by this admixture is of the same order of magnitude as the longitudinal one, and band mixing adds on…
Hole spins in semiconductor quantum dots or bound to acceptor impurities show promise as potential qubits, partly because of their weak and anisotropic hyperfine couplings to proximal nuclear spins. Since the hyperfine coupling is weak, it can be difficult to measure. However, an anisotropic hyperfine coupling can give rise to a substantial spin-echo envelope modulation that can be Fourier-analyzed to accurately reveal the hyperfine tensor. Here, we give a general theoretical analysis for hole-spin-echo envelope modulation (HSEEM), and apply this analysis to the specific case of a boron-accept…
The energies of valley-orbit states in silicon quantum dots are determined by an as yet poorly understood interplay between interface roughness, orbital confinement, and electron interactions. Here, we report measurements of one- and two-electron valley-orbit state energies as the dot potential is modified by changing gate voltages, and we calculate these same energies using full configuration interaction calculations. The results enable an understanding of the interplay between the physical contributions and enable a new probe of the quantum well interface.
Quantum computers have the potential to efficiently solve problems in logistics, drug and material design, finance, and cybersecurity. However, millions of qubits will be necessary for correcting inevitable errors in quantum operations. In this scenario, electron spins in gate-defined silicon quantum dots are strong contenders for encoding qubits, leveraging the microelectronics industry know-how for fabricating densely populated chips with nanoscale electrodes. The sophisticated material combinations used in commercially manufactured transistors, however, will have a very different impact on …
We review and summarize recent theoretical and experimental work on electron spin dynamics in quantum dots and related nanostructures due to hyperfine interaction with surrounding nuclear spins. This topic is of particular interest with respect to several proposals for quantum information processing in solid state systems. Specifically, we investigate the hyperfine interaction of an electron spin confined in a quantum dot in an s-type conduction band with the nuclear spins in the dot. This interaction is proportional to the square modulus of the electron wave function at the location of each n…
RF reflectometry offers a fast and sensitive method for charge sensing and spin readout in gated quantum dots. We focus in this work on the implementation of RF readout in accumulation-mode gate-defined quantum dots, where the large parasitic capacitance poses a challenge. We describe and test two methods for mitigating the effect of the parasitic capacitance, one by on-chip modifications and a second by off-chip changes. We demonstrate that these methods enable high-performance charge readout in Si/SiGe quantum dots, achieving a fidelity of 99.9% for a measurement time of 1 $μ$s.
In self assembled III-V semiconductor quantum dots, valence holes have longer spin coherence times than the conduction electrons, due to their weaker coupling to nuclear spin bath fluctuations. Prolonging hole spin stability relies on a better understanding of the hole to nuclear spin hyperfine coupling which we address both in experiment and theory in the symmetric (111) GaAs/AlGaAs droplet dots. In magnetic fields applied along the growth axis, we create a strong nuclear spin polarization detected through the positively charged trion X$^+$ Zeeman and Overhauser splittings. The observation of…
We numerically study the hyperfine induced nuclear spin dynamics in a system of two coupled quantum dots in zero magnetic field. Each of the electron spins is considered to interact with an individual bath of nuclear spins via homogeneous coupling constants (all coupling coefficients being equal). In order to lower the dimension of the problem, the two baths are approximated by two single long spins. We demonstrate that the hyperfine interaction enables to utilize the nuclear baths for quantum information purposes. In particular, we show that it is possible to swap the nuclear ensembles on tim…
We report on the influence of hyperfine interaction on the optical orientation of singly charged excitons X+ and X- in self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots. All measurements were carried out on individual quantum dots studied by micro-photoluminescence at low temperature. We show that the hyperfine interaction leads to an effective partial spin relaxation, under 50kHz modulated excitation polarization, which becomes however strongly inhibited under steady optical pumping conditions because of dynamical nuclear polarization. This optically created magnetic-like nuclear field can become very st…
Carbon based systems are prominent candidates for a solid-state spin-qubit due to weak spin-orbit and hyperfine interactions in combination with a low natural abundance of spin carrying isotopes. We consider the effect of the hyperfine interaction on the coherence of an electron-spin localized in a graphene quantum dot. It is known, that the hyperfine interaction in these systems is anisotropic promising interesting physics. We calculate the dynamics of an electron spin surrounded by a bath of nuclear spins in a non-Markovian approach using a generalized master equation. Considering a general …
Hyperfine interaction (HF) is of key importance for the functionality of solid-state quantum information processing, as it affects qubit coherence and enables nuclear-spin quantum memories. In this work, we complete the theory of the basic hyperfine interaction mechanisms (Fermi contact, dipolar, orbital) in carbon nanotube quantum dots by providing a theoretical description of the orbital HF. We find that orbital HF induces an interaction between the nuclear spins of the nanotube lattice and the valley degree of freedom of the electrons confined in the quantum dot. We show that the resulting …
The nuclear spin fluctuations (NSF) as well as the dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) and their effects on the electron spins in negatively charged (In,Ga)As/GaAs quantum dots have been studied by polarized pump-probe and photoluminescence spectroscopy techniques. The effective magnetic field of the NSF is about 30 mT at low excitation power. The NSF distribution becomes highly anisotropic at strong optical excitation by circularly polarized light with periodically alternating helicity. This phenomenon is attributed to a decrease of the nuclear spin entropy due to the hyperfine interaction wit…
Phosphorus donor impurities in silicon are a promising candidate for solid-state quantum computing due to their exceptionally long coherence times and high fidelities. However, individual addressability of exchange coupled donor qubits with separations ~15nm is challenging. Here we show that by using atomic-precision lithography we can place a single P donor next to a 2P molecule 16(+/-1)nm apart and use their distinctive hyperfine coupling strengths to address qubits at vastly different resonance frequencies. In particular the single donor yields two hyperfine peaks separated by 97(+/-2.5)MHz…
We apply an elementary measurement scheme to calculate the electronic triplet-singlet transition mediated by hyperfine interaction in a double quantum dot. We show how the local character of the hyperfine interaction and the nuclear back-action process (flip-flop) are crucial to cancel destructive interferences of the triplet-singlet transition probability. It is precisely this cancellation which differentiates the hyperfine interaction from an anisotropic magnetic field which mixes the triplet and the singlet eigenstates.
We consider theoretically ${}^{13}$C-hyperfine interaction induced dephasing in carbon nanotubes double quantum dots with curvature induced spin-orbit coupling. For two electrons initially occupying a single dot, we calculate the average return probability after separation into the two dots, which have random nuclear-spin configurations. We focus on the long time saturation value of the return probability, $P_\infty$. Because of the valley degree of freedom, the analysis is more complex than in, for example, GaAs quantum dots, which have two distinct $P_\infty$ values depending on the magnetic…
With silicon being the go-to material for spin qubits, and motivated by the demand of a scalable quantum computer architecture for fast and reliable quantum information transfer on-chip, we study coherent electron transport in a silicon double quantum dot. We first examine the valley-orbital dynamics in a silicon double dot, and discuss how to properly measure the tunnel couplings as well as the valley phase difference between two quantum dots. We then focus on possible phase and spin flip errors during spin transport across a silicon double dot. In particular, we clarify correction on the eff…
Magnetic-field gradients are important for single-site addressability and electric-dipole spin resonance of spin qubits in semiconductor devices. We show that these advantages are offset by a potential reduction in coherence time due to the non-uniformity of the magnetic field experienced by a nuclear-spin bath interacting with the spin qubit. We theoretically study spins confined to quantum dots or at single donor impurities, considering both free-induction and spin-echo decay. For quantum dots in GaAs, we find that, in a realistic setting, a magnetic-field gradient can reduce the Hahn-echo c…
Deep cooling of electron and nuclear spins is equivalent to achieving polarization degrees close to 100% and is a key requirement in solid state quantum information technologies. While polarization of individual nuclear spins in diamond and SiC reaches 99% and beyond, it has been limited to 60-65% for the nuclei in quantum dots. Theoretical models have attributed this limit to formation of coherent "dark" nuclear spin states but experimental verification is lacking, especially due to the poor accuracy of polarization degree measurements. Here we measure the nuclear polarization in GaAs/AlGaAs …
Significant advances have been made towards fault-tolerant operation of silicon spin qubits, with single qubit fidelities exceeding 99.9%, several demonstrations of two-qubit gates based on exchange coupling, and the achievement of coherent single spin-photon coupling. Coupling arbitrary pairs of spatially separated qubits in a quantum register poses a significant challenge as most qubit systems are constrained to two dimensions (2D) with nearest neighbor connectivity. For spins in silicon, new methods for quantum state transfer should be developed to achieve connectivity beyond nearest-neighb…
Decoherence caused by nuclear field fluctuations is a fundamental obstacle to the realization of quantum information processing using single electron spins. Alternative proposals have been made to use spin qubits based on valence band holes having weaker hyperfine coupling. However, it was demonstrated recently both theoretically and experimentally that the hole hyperfine interaction is not negligible, although a consistent picture of the mechanism controlling the magnitude of the hole-nuclear coupling is still lacking. Here we address this problem by performing isotope selective measurement o…
Coherence of spins of electrons confined in III-V quantum dots is strongly affected by their hyperfine interaction with the nuclei. In this paper an introduction to this subject will be given. Some theoretical approaches to the problem will be outlined. Most attention will be given to the Quasi-Static Bath Approximation, to the cluster expansion theories of dephasing due to the nuclear dynamics induced by the dipolar interactions (spectral diffusion), and to the effective Hamiltonian based theory of dephasing due to hyperfine-mediated interactions. The connections between the theoretical resul…
We show that the hyperfine mediated dynamics of heavy hole states confined in neutral self- assembled quantum dots leads to a nuclear spin diffusion mechanism. It is found that the oftentimes neglected effective heavy hole hyperfine non-collinear interaction is responsible for the low degree of nuclear spin polarization in neutral quantum dots. Moreover, our results demonstrate that after pumping the nuclear spin state is left in a complex mixed state, from which it is not straightforward to deduce the sign of the Ising-like interactions.
The effects of host isotope mass on the hyperfine interaction of group-V donors in silicon are revealed by pulsed electron nuclear double resonance (ENDOR) spectroscopy of isotopically engineered Si single crystals. Each of the hyperfine-split P-31, As-75, Sb-121, Sb-123, and Bi-209 ENDOR lines splits further into multiple components, whose relative intensities accurately match the statistical likelihood of the nine possible average Si masses in the four nearest-neighbor sites due to random occupation by the three stable isotopes Si-28, Si-29, and Si-30. Further investigation with P-31 donors …
We theoretically study the nuclear spin dynamics driven by electron transport and hyperfine interaction in an electrically-defined double quantum dot (DQD) in the Pauli-blockade regime. We derive a master-equation-based framework and show that the coupled electron-nuclear system displays an instability towards the buildup of large nuclear spin polarization gradients in the two quantum dots. In the presence of such inhomogeneous magnetic fields, a quantum interference effect in the collective hyperfine coupling results in sizable nuclear spin entanglement between the two quantum dots in the ste…
We investigate spin relaxation in a silicon double quantum dot via leakage current through Pauli blockade as a function of interdot detuning and magnetic field. A dip in leakage current as a function of magnetic field on a \sim 40 mT field scale is attributed to spin-orbit mediated spin relaxation. On a larger (\sim 400 mT) field scale, a peak in leakage current is seen in some, but not all, Pauli-blocked transitions, and is attributed to spin-flip cotunneling. Both dip and peak structure show good agreement between theory and experiment.
The population dynamics of dark and bright excitons in (In,Ga)As/GaAs quantum dots is studied by two-color pump-probe spectroscopy in an external magnetic field. With the field applied in Faraday geometry and at T<20 K, the dark excitons decay on a ten nanoseconds time scale unless the magnetic field induces a resonance with a bright exciton state. At these crossings their effective lifetime is drastically shortened due to spin flips of either electron or hole by which the dark excitons are converted into bright ones. Due to the quasielastic character we attribute the origin of these flips to …
We demonstrate a hybrid device architecture where the charge states in a double quantum dot (DQD) formed in a Si/SiGe heterostructure are read out using an on-chip superconducting microwave cavity. A quality factor Q = 5,400 is achieved by selectively etching away regions of the quantum well and by reducing photon losses through low-pass filtering of the gate bias lines. Homodyne measurements of the cavity transmission reveal DQD charge stability diagrams and a charge-cavity coupling rate g_c/2pi = 23 MHz. These measurements indicate that electrons trapped in a Si DQD can be effectively couple…
We report electronic transport on silicon double and triple dots created with the optimized number of two gates. Using silicon nitride spacers two dots in series are created below two top gates overlapping a silicon nanowire. Coupling between dots is controlled by gate voltages. A third dot is created either by combined action of gate voltages or local doping depending on the spacers length. The main characteristics of the triple dot stability diagram are quantitatively fitted.
