This paper proposes a universal microscopic model for the shallow confinement regime of single-electron tunneling devices. We consider particle escape from a quantum well generically emerging as a bifurcation in a smooth electrostatic potential and develop a set of analytic and numerical approximations for the ground-state tunneling and thermally activated escape rates. These approximations are applied to the problem of electron capture by a closing tunnel barrier where the competition between the closing speed and the escape rate defines a scaling relation for the capture fidelity. Effective one-dimensional cubic potential approximation leads to a universal form of this scaling relation in terms of device-independent dimensionless depth and speed parameters. Using predictions for temperature and magnetic-field dependence we show how to infer the energy scales of cubic longitudinal and quadratic transverse confinement. Finally, we derive an intrinsic quantum speed bound for adiabatic protection of the ground state tunneling and show that the latter can potentially be exploited up to the break down of confinement with a practical speed limit set by reaching the quantum uncertainty of the barrier height before the onset of non-adiabatic excitation. These results contribute to mapping out the physical limits of single-electron quantum technologies for electrical metrology and sensing.
We define single quantum dots of lengths varying from 60 nm up to nearly half a micron in Ge-Si core-shell nanowires. The charging energies scale inversely with the quantum dot length between 18 and 4 meV. Subsequently, we split up a long dot into a double quantum dot with a separate control over the tunnel couplings and the electrochemical potential of each dot. Both single and double quantum dot configurations prove to be very stable and show excellent control over the electrostatic environment of the dots, making this system a highly versatile platform for spin-based quantum computing.
Polariton emission from optical cavities integrated with various luminophores has been extensively studied recently due to the wide variety of possible applications in photonics, particularly promising in terms of fabrication of low-threshold sources of coherent emission. Tuneable microcavities allow extensive investigation of the photophysical properties of matter placed inside the cavity by deterministically changing the coupling strength and controllable switching from weak to strong and ultra-strong coupling regimes. Here we demonstrate room temperature strong coupling of exciton transitio…
In this paper we report on a tuneable few electron lateral triple quantum dot design. The quantum dot potentials are arranged in series. The device is aimed at studies of triple quantum dot properties where knowing the exact number of electrons is important as well as quantum information applications involving electron spin qubits. We demonstrate tuning strategies for achieving required resonant conditions such as quadruple points where all three quantum dots are on resonance. We find that in such a device resonant conditions at specific configurations are accompanied by novel charge transfer …
Single electron spins in semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) are a versatile platform for quantum information processing, however controlling decoherence remains a considerable challenge. Recently, hole spins have emerged as a promising alternative. Holes in III-V semiconductors have unique properties, such as strong spin-orbit interaction and weak coupling to nuclear spins, and therefore have potential for enhanced spin control and longer coherence times. Weaker hyperfine interaction has already been reported in self-assembled quantum dots using quantum optics techniques. However, challenging fa…
We carry out a detailed investigation of neutral ($D^0$) and charged ($D^-$) impurity states of hydrogen-like donors in spherical semiconductor quantum dots. The investigation is carried out within the effective mass theory (EMT). We take recourse to local density approximation (LDA) and the Harbola-Sahni (HS) schemes for treating many-body effects. We experiment with a variety of confining potentials: square, harmonic and triangular. We observe that the donor level undergoes shallow to deep transition as the dot radius ($R$) is reduced. On further reduction of the dot radius it becomes shallo…
We report quantum dots fabricated on very shallow 2-dimensional electron gases, only 30 nm below the surface, in undoped GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Due to the absence of dopants, an improvement of more than one order of magnitude in mobility (at 2E11 /cm^2) with respect to doped heterostructures with similar depths is observed. These undoped wafers can easily be gated with surface metallic gates patterned by e-beam lithography, as demonstrated here from single-level transport through a quantum dot showing large charging energies (up to 1.75 meV) and excited s…
Low-Noise Quantum Dots in Ultra-Shallow Ge/SiGe Heterostructures for Prototyping Hybrid Semiconducting-Superconducting Devices
Institute of Science and Technology Austria（奥地利科学与技术研究所）；Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology – ICN2 (CSIC and BIST)（加泰罗尼亚纳米科学技术研究所（CSIC和BIST））
Low energy spectra of isotropic quantum dots are calculated in the regime of low electron densities where Coulomb interaction causes strong correlations. The earlier developed pocket state method is generalized to allow for continuous rotations. Detailed predictions are made for dots of shallow confinements and small particle numbers, including the occurance of spin blockades in transport.
Binding of few-electron systems in two-dimensional potential cavities in the presence of an external magnetic field is studied with the exact diagonalization approach. We demonstrate that for shallow cavities the few-electron system becomes bound only under the application of a strong magnetic field. The critical value of the depth of the cavity allowing the formation of a bound state decreases with magnetic field in a non-smooth fashion, due to the increasing angular momentum of the first bound state. In the high magnetic field limit the binding energies and the critical values for the depth …
A spherical quantum dot (QD) heterosystem CdS/SiO$_2$ has been studied. Each QD has a hydrogen-like impurity in its center. Besides that, it has been accounted that a polarization trap for electron exists at the interfaces due to the difference between the QD and matrix dielectric permittivity. It has been defined that for small QD radii there are surface electron states. For different radii, partial contributions of the surface states into the electron energy caused by the electron-ion and electron-polarization charges interaction have been defined. The linear light absorption coefficient of …
Using Single Electron Capacitance Spectroscopy, we study electron additions in quantum dots containing two potential minima separated by a shallow barrier. Analysis of addition spectra in magnetic field allows us to distinguish whether electrons are localized in either potential minimum or delocalized over the entire dot. We demonstrate that high magnetic field abruptly splits up a low-density droplet into two smaller fragments, each residing in a potential minimum. An unexplained cancellation of electron repulsion between electrons in these fragments gives rise to paired electron additions.
We have observed a negative differential conductance with singular gate and source-drain bias dependences in a phosphorus-doped silicon quantum dot. Its origin is discussed within the framework of weak localization. By measuring the current-voltage characteristics at different temperatures as well as simulating the tunneling rates dependences on energy, we demonstrate that the presence of shallow energy defects together with an enhancement of localization satisfactory explain our observations. Effects observed in magnetic fields are also discussed.
Moiré superlattices in twistronic heterostructures are a powerful tool for materials engineering. In marginally twisted (small misalignment angle, $θ$) bilayers of nearly lattice-matched two-dimensional (2D) crystals moiré patterns take the form of domains of commensurate stacking, separated by a network of domain walls (NoDW) with strain hot spots at the NoDW nodes. Here, we show that, for type-II transition metal dichalcogenide bilayers MoX$_2$/WX$_2$ (X=S, Se), the hydrostatic strain component in these hot spots creates quantum dots for electrons and holes. We investigate the electron/hole …
A new fabrication technique is used to produce quantum dots with read-out channels in silicon/silicon-germanium two-dimensional electron gases. The technique utilizes Schottky gates, placed on the sides of a shallow etched quantum dot, to control the electronic transport process. An adjacent quantum point contact gate is integrated to the side gates to define a read-out channel and thus allow for noninvasive detection of the electronic occupation of the quantum dot. Reproducible and stable Coulomb oscillations and the corresponding jumps in the read-out channel resistance are observed at low t…
Making use of droplet epitaxy, we systematically controlled the height of self-assembled GaAs quantum dots by more than one order of magnitude. The photoluminescence spectra of single quantum dots revealed the strong dependence of the spectral linewidth on the dot height. Tall dots with a height of ~30 nm showed broad spectral peaks with an average width as large as ~5 meV, but shallow dots with a height of ~2 nm showed resolution-limited spectral lines (<120 micro eV). The measured height dependence of the linewidths is in good agreement with Stark coefficients calculated for the experimental…
Superconductors and semiconductors are crucial platforms in the field of quantum computing. They can be combined to hybrids, bringing together physical properties that enable the discovery of new emergent phenomena and provide novel strategies for quantum control. The involved semiconductor materials, however, suffer from disorder, hyperfine interactions or lack of planar technology. Here we realise an approach that overcomes these issues altogether and integrate gate-defined quantum dots and superconductivity into a material system with strong spin-orbit coupling. In our germanium heterostruc…
Exchange interaction has been studied for electrons in coupled quantum dots (QD's) by a configuration interaction method using confinement potentials with different profiles. The confinement potential has been parametrized by a two-centre power-exponential function, which allows us to investigate various types of QD's described by either soft or hard potentials of different range. For the soft (Gaussian) confinement potential the exchange energy decreases with increasing interdot distance due to the decreasing interdot tunnelling. For the hard (rectangular-like) confinement potential we have f…
Spins in gate-defined silicon quantum dots are promising candidates for implementing large-scale quantum computing. To read the spin state of these qubits, the mechanism that has provided the highest fidelity is spin-to-charge conversion via singlet-triplet spin blockade, which can be detected in-situ using gate-based dispersive sensing. In systems with a complex energy spectrum, like silicon quantum dots, accurately identifying when singlet-triplet blockade occurs is hence of major importance for scalable qubit readout. In this work, we present a description of spin blockade physics in a tunn…
We present studies on Coulomb interactions in single self-assembled CdTe quantum dots. We use a field effect structure to tune the charge state of the dot and investigate the impact of the charge state on carrier wave functions. The analysis of the quantum confined Stark shifts of four excitonic complexes allows us to conclude that the hole wave function is softer than electron wave function, i. e. it is subject to stronger modifications upon changing of the dot charge state. These conclusions are corroborated by time-resolved photoluminescence studies of recombination lifetimes of different e…
We consider spin-lattice relaxation processes for electrons trapped in lateral Si quantum dots in a $[001]$ inversion layer. Such dots are characterized by strong confinement in the direction perpendicular to the surface and much weaker confinement in the lateral direction. The spin relaxation is assumed to be due to the modulation of electron $g$-factor by the phonon-induced strain, as was shown previously for the shallow donors. The results clearly indicate that the specific valley structure of the ground electron state in Si quantum dots causes strong anisotropy for both the one-phonon and …
We present exact solutions for two interacting electrons on an artificial atom and on an artificial molecule made by one and two (single level) quantum dots connected by ideal leads. Specifically, we calculate the accumulated charge on the dots as function of the gate voltage, for various strengths of the electron-electron interaction and of the hybridization between the dots and the (one-dimensional) leads. With increasing of the (negative) gate voltage, the accumulated charge in the two-electron ground state increases in gradual steps from 0 to 1 and then to 2. The value 0 represents an "ins…
Electronic and nuclear spins of shallow donors in Silicon are attractive candidates for qubits in quantum computer proposals. Shallow donor exchange gates are frequently invoked to preform two-qubit operations in such proposals. We study shallow donor electron properties in Si within the Kohn-Luttinger envelope function approach, incorporating the full Bloch states of the six band edges of Si conduction band, obtained from {\it ab initio} calculations within the density-functional and pseudopotential frameworks. Inter-valley interference between the conduction-band-edge states of Si leads to o…
This study alleviates the low operating temperature constraint of Si qubits. A qubit is a key element for quantum sensors, memories, and computers. Electron spin in Si is a promising qubit, as it allows both long coherence times and potential compatibility with current silicon technology. Si qubits have been implemented using gate-defined quantum dots or shallow impurities. However, operation of Si qubits has been restricted to milli-Kelvin temperatures, thus limiting the application of the quantum technology. In this study, we addressed a single deep impurity, having strong electron confineme…
We present a general formulation of the ground state binding energy of a shallow hydrogenic impurity in spherical quantum dot with parabolic confinement, considering the effects of polarization and self energy. The variational approach within the effective mass approximation is employed here. The binding energy of an on-center impurity is computed for a $\mathrm{GaAs}$/ $\mathrm{{Al}_{x}{Ga}_{1-x}As}$ quantum dot as a function of the dot size with the dot barrier as parameter. The influence of polarization and self energy are also treated separately. Results indicate that the binding energy in…
We consider charge qubits based on shallow donor electron states in silicon and coupled quantum dots in GaAs. Specifically, we study the feasibility of P$_2^+$ charge qubits in Si, focusing on single qubit properties in terms of tunnel coupling between the two phosphorus donors and qubit decoherence caused by electron-phonon interaction. By taking into consideration the multi-valley structure of the Si conduction band, we show that inter-valley quantum interference has important consequences for single-qubit operations of P$_2^+$ charge qubits. In particular, the valley interference leads to a…
Surface acoustic waves (SAWs) strongly modulate the shallow electric potential in piezoelectric materials. In semiconductor heterostructures such as GaAs/AlGaAs, SAWs can thus be employed to transfer individual electrons between distant quantum dots. This transfer mechanism makes SAW technologies a promising candidate to convey quantum information through a circuit of quantum logic gates. Here we present two essential building blocks of such a SAW-driven quantum circuit. First, we implement a directional coupler allowing to partition a flying electron arbitrarily into two paths of transportati…
