This Letter presents a method of electron entanglement generation. The system under consideration is a single-level quantum dot with one input and two output leads. The leads are arranged such that the dot is empty, single electron tunneling is suppressed by energy conservation, and two-electron virtual co-tunneling is allowed. This yields a pure, non-local spin-singlet state at the output leads. Coulomb interaction is the nonlinearity essential for entanglement generation, and, in its absence, the singlet state vanishes. This type of electron entanglement is a four-wave mixing process analogous to the photon entanglement generated by a Chi-3 parametric amplifier.
We investigate the generation of entanglement through a quantum dot molecule under the influence of vibrational phonon modes in a bias voltage junction. The molecular quantum dot system is realized by coupled quantum dots inside a suspended carbon nanotube. We consider the dynamical entanglement as a function of bias voltage and temperature by taking into account the electron-phonon interaction. In order to generate the robust entanglement between quantum dots and preserve it to reach the maximal achievable amount steadily, we introduce an asymmetric coupling protocol and apply the easy tunabl…
Entanglement between particle and detector is known to be inherent in the measurement process. Gurvitz recently analyzed the coupling of an electron in a double dot (DD) to a quantum point contact (QPC) detector. In this paper we examine the dynamics of entanglement that result between the DD and QPC. The rate of entanglement is optimized as a function of coupling when the electron is initially in one of the dots. It decreases asymptotically towards zero with increased coupling. The opposite behavior is observed when the DD is initially in a superposition: the rate of entanglement increases un…
We propose schemes for generating spatially-separated spin entanglement in systems of two quantum dots with onsite Coulomb repulsion weakly coupled to a joint electron reservoir. An enhanced probability for the formation of spin entanglement is found in nonequilibrium situations with one extra electron on each dot, either in the transient state after rapid changes of the gate voltage, or in the steady state with applied bias voltage. In both cases so-called Werner states with spin singlet fidelity exceeding 1/2 are generated, which indicates entanglement.
We theoretically investigate the efficiency of an entanglement swapping procedure based on the use of quantum dots as sources of entangled photon pairs. The four-photon interference that affects such efficiency is potentially limited by the fine-structure splitting and by the time correlation between cascaded photons, which provide which-path information. The effect of spectral inhomogeneity is also considered, and a possible quantum eraser experiment is discussed for the case of identical dots.
We demonstrate how robust entanglement of quantum dot molecular system in a voltage controlled junction can be generated. To improve the quantum information characteristics of this system, we propose an applicable protocol which contains the implementation of asymmetric quantum dots as well as engineering reservoirs. Quantum dots with tunable energy barriers can provide asymmetric coupling coefficients which can be tuned by gap voltages. Also by engineering reservoirs, superconductors can be used as leads in a biased-voltage junction. The high-controllability characteristics of system supplies…
The electron spin state of a singly charged semiconductor quantum dot has been shown to form a suitable single qubit for quantum computing architectures with fast gate times. A key challenge in realizing a useful quantum dot quantum computing architecture lies in demonstrating the ability to scale the system to many qubits. In this letter, we report an all optical experimental demonstration of quantum entanglement between a single electron spin confined to single charged semiconductor quantum dot and the polarization state of a photon spontaneously emitted from the quantum dot's excited state.…
The production of orbitally entangled electrons in quantum-chaotic dots is investigated from a statistical point of view. The degree of entanglement is quantified through the concurrence and the entanglement of formation. We calculate the complete statistical distributions of the entanglement measures by using random matrix theory. Simple analytical expressions are provided for the concurrence distributions. We identify clear signatures of time-reversal invariance in the production of entanglement at the level of the entanglement-measure distributions, such as the ability of producing maximall…
We study numerically the production of orbital and spin entangled states in chaotic quantum dots for non-interacting electrons. The introduction of spin-orbit coupling permit us to identify signatures of time-reversal symmetry correlations in the entanglement production previously unnoticed, resembling weak-(anti)localization quantum corrections to the conductance. We find the entanglement to be strongly dependent on spin-orbit coupling, showing universal features for broken time-reversal and spin-rotation symmetries.
We investigate coherent single surface-plasmon transport in a metal nanowire strongly coupled to two colloidal quantum dots. Analytical expressions are obtained for the transmission and reflection coefficients by solving the corresponding eigenvalue equation. Remote entanglement of the wave functions of the two quantum dots can be created if the inter-dot distance is equal to a multiple half-wavelength of the surface plasmon. Furthermore, by applying classical laser pulses to the quantum dots, the entangled states can be stored in metastable states which are decoupled from the surface plasmons…
Adiabatic passage of two correlated electrons in three coupled quantum dots is shown to provide a robust and controlled way of distilling, transporting and detecting spin entanglement, as well as of measuring the rate of spin disentanglement. Employing tunable interdot coupling the scheme creates, from an unentangled two-electron state, a superposition of spatially separated singlet and triplet states. A single measurement of a dot population (charge) collapses the wave function to either of these states, realizing entanglement to charge conversion. The scheme is robust, with the efficiency cl…
We investigate the influence of vibrational phonon modes on the entanglement through a quantum dot molecule under the bias voltage-driven field. The molecular quantum dot system can be realized by coupled quantum dots in the middle of the suspended carbon nanotube. This system would be described by the Anderson-Holstein model and also can be analyzed by the polaron master equation in Markovian regime. In the presence of electron-phonon interaction, we study the entanglement as a function of bias voltage and temperature. Despite entanglement degradation because of phonon decoherence, we employ …
We report on simulations of the degree of polarization entanglement of photon pairs simultaneously emitted from a quantum dot-cavity system that demand revisiting the role of phonons. Since coherence is a fundamental precondition for entanglement and phonons are known to be a major source of decoherence, it seems unavoidable that phonons can only degrade entanglement. In contrast, we demonstrate that phonons can cause a degree of entanglement that even surpasses the corresponding value for the phonon-free case. In particular, we consider the situation of comparatively small biexciton binding e…
Quantum gates that temporarily increase singlet-triplet splitting in order to swap electronic spins in coupled quantum dots, lead inevitably to a finite double-occupancy probability for both dots. By solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for a coupled dot model, we demonstrate that this does not necessarily lead to quantum computation errors. Instead, the coupled dot ground state evolves quasi-adiabatically for typical system parameters so that the double-occupancy probability at the completion of swapping is negligibly small. We introduce a measure of entanglement which explicitly t…
We propose a scheme based on using the singlet ground state of an electron spin pair in a double quantum dot nanostructure as a suitable set-up for detecting entanglement between electron spins via the measurement of an optimal entanglement witness. Using time-dependent gate voltages and magnetic fields the entangled spins are separated and coherently rotated in the quantum dots and subsequently detected at spin-polarized quantum point contacts. We analyze the coherent time evolution of the entangled pair and show that by counting coincidences in the four exits an entanglement test can be done…
We found that a downwardly concave entanglement evolution of the ground state of a two-electron axially symmetric quantum dot testifies that a shape transition from a lateral to a vertical localization of two electrons under a perpendicular magnetic field takes place. Although affected, the two-electron probability density does not exhibit any prominent change.
Singlet-triplet states in double quantum dots are promising realizations of qubits, and capacitive coupling can be used to create entanglement between these qubits. We propose an entangling three-qubit gate of singlet-triplet qubits in a triangular setup. Our simulations using a realistic microscopic model show that a maximally entangled Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state can be generated as the qubits are evolved under exchange. Furthermore, our analysis for the gate operation can be used to extract the actual experimental pulse sequence needed to realize this.
We study the decay of entanglement of quantum dot electron-spin qubits under hyperfine interaction mediated decoherence. We show that two qubit entanglement of a single entangled initial state may exhibit decay characteristic of the two disentanglement regimes in a single sample, when the external magnetic field is changed. The transition is manifested by the supression of time-dependent entanglement oscillations which are superimposed on the slowly varying entanglement decay related to phase decoherence (which result in oscillatory behaviour of entanglement sudden death time as a function of …
We show that two initially non-resonant quantum dots may be brought into resonance by the application of a single detuned laser. This allows for control of the inter-dot interactions and the generation of highly entangled excitonic states on the picosecond timescale. Along with arbitrary single qubit manipulations, this system would be sufficient for the demonstration of a prototype excitonic quantum computer.
We propose how to generate genuine multipartite entanglement of electron spin qubits in a chain of quantum dots using the naturally available single-qubit rotations and two-qubit Heisenberg exchange interaction in the system. We show that the minimum number of required operations to generate entangled states of the GHZ-, cluster and W-type scales linearly with the number of qubits and estimate the fidelities of the generated entangled cluster states. As the required single and two-qubit operations have recently been realized, our proposed scheme opens the way for experimental investigation of …
The interaction between two quantum bits enables entanglement, the two-particle correlations that are at the heart of quantum information science. In semiconductor quantum dots much work has focused on demonstrating single spin qubit control using optical techniques. However, optical control of entanglement of two spin qubits remains a major challenge for scaling from a single qubit to a full-fledged quantum information platform. Here, we combine advances in vertically-stacked quantum dots with ultrafast laser techniques to achieve optical control of the entangled state of two electron spins. …
Nonlocal entanglement between two quantum dots can be generated through Majorana fermions. The two Majorana fermions at the ends of an one-dimensional topological superconductor form a nonlocal fermion level, coupling to the occupation states of two quantum dots put close to the two ends, and the entire system will come into an entangled state. After introducing a charging energy by a capacitor, entanglement of the entire system can manifest itself through the nonlocal entanglement between the two quantum dots. That is, when measuring the electron occupations of the quantum dots, the measureme…
We present a detailed analysis of the electronic and optical properties of two-electron quantum dots with a two-dimensional Gaussian confinement potential. We study the effects of Coulomb impurities and the possibility of manipulate the entanglement of the electrons by controlling the confinement potential parameters. The degree of entanglement becomes highly modulated by both the location and charge screening of the impurity atom, resulting two regimes: one of low entanglement and other of high entanglement, with both of them mainly determined by the magnitude of the charge. It is shown that …
We present a solid state thermal machine based on quantum dots to generate steady-state entanglement between distant spins. Unlike previous approaches our system is controlled by experimentally feasible steady state currents manipulated by dc voltages. By analyzing the Liouvillian eigenspectrum as a function of the control parameters, we show that our device operates over a large voltage region. As an extension, the proposed device also works as an entanglement thermal machine under a temperature gradient that can even give rise to entanglement at zero voltage bias. Finally, we highlight a pos…
We characterize the quantum entanglement of the realistic two-qubit signals that are sensitive to charge noises. Our working example is the time response generated from a silicon double quantum dot (DQD) platform, where a single-qubit rotation and a two-qubit controlled-NOT operation are conducted sequentially in time to generate arbitrary entangled states. In order to characterize the entanglement of two-qubit states, we employ the marginal operational quasiprobability (OQ) approach that allows negative values of the probability function if a given state is entangled. While the charge noise, …
We study the photon emission from a quantum dot embedded in a microcavity. Incoherent pumping of its excitons and biexciton provokes the emission of leaky and cavity modes. By solving a master equation we obtain the correlation functions required to compute the spectrum and the relative efficiency among the emission of pairs and single photons. A quantum regime appears for low pumping and large rate of emission. By means of a post-selection process, a two beams experiment with different linear polarizations could be performed producing a large polarization entanglement visibility precisely in …
We propose a scheme for the deterministic generation of steady-state entanglement between the two nuclear spin ensembles in an electrically defined double quantum dot. Due to quantum interference in the collective coupling to the electronic degrees of freedom, the nuclear system is actively driven into a two-mode squeezed-like target state. The entanglement build-up is accompanied by a self-polarization of the nuclear spins towards large Overhauser field gradients. Moreover, the feedback between the electronic and nuclear dynamics leads to multi-stability and criticality in the steady-state so…
We propose to measure the superradiance effect by observing the current through a semiconductor double-dot ststem. An electron and a hole are injected separately into one of the quantum dots to form an exciton and then recombine radiatively. We find that the stationary current shows oscillatory behavior as one varies the inter-dot distance. The amplitude of oscillation can be increased by incorporating the system into a microcavity. Furthermore, the current is suppressed if the dot distance is small compared to the wavelength of the emitted photon. This photon trapping phenomenon generates the…
We investigate the dynamical behavior of entanglement in a system made by two solid-state emitters, as two quantum dots, embedded in two separated micro-cavities. In these solid-state systems, in addition to the coupling with the cavity mode, the emitter is coupled to a continuum of leaky modes providing additional losses and it is also subject to a phonon-induced pure dephasing mechanism. We model this physical configuration as a multipartite system composed by two independent parts each containing a qubit embedded in a single-mode cavity, exposed to cavity losses, spontaneous emission and pu…
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…
We study theoretically the entanglement created in a scattering between an electron, incoming from a source lead, and another electron bound in the ground state of a quantum dot, connected to two leads. We analyze the role played by the different kinds of resonances in the transmission spectra and by the number of scattering channels, into the amount of quantum correlations between the two identical carriers. It is shown that the entanglement between their energy states is not sensitive to the presence of Breit-Wigner resonances, while it presents a peculiar behavior in correspondence of Fano …
We investigate the competition between pair entanglement of two spin qubits in double quantum dots attached to leads with various topologies and the separate entanglement of each spin with nearby electrodes. Universal behavior of entanglement is demonstrated in dependence on the mutual interactions between the spin qubits, the coupling to their environment, temperature and magnetic field. As a consequence of quantum phase transition an abrupt switch between fully entangled and unentangled states takes place when the dots are coupled in parallel.
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…
Time evolution of entanglement of N quantum dots is analyzed within the spin-1/2 van der Waals (or Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick) XY model. It is shown that, for a single dot initially excited and disentangled from the remaining unexcited dots, the maximum bipartite entanglement can be obtained in the systems of N=2,...,6 dots only.
Addressing the feasibilty of quantum communication with electrons we consider entangled spin states of electrons in a double-dot which is weakly coupled to in--and outgoing leads. We show that the entanglement of two electrons in the double-dot can be detected in mesoscopic transport and noise measurements. In the Coulomb blockade and cotunneling regime the singlet and triplet states lead to phase-coherent current and noise contributions of opposite signs and to Aharonov-Bohm and Berry phase oscillations in response to magnetic fields. These oscillations are a genuine two-particle effect and p…
We show how optically-driven coupled quantum dots can be used to prepare maximally entangled Bell and Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states. Manipulation of the strength and duration of the selective light-pulses needed for producing these highly entangled states provides us with crucial elements for the processing of solid-state based quantum information. Theoretical predictions suggest that several hundred single quantum bit rotations and Controlled-Not gates could be performed before decoherence of the excitonic states takes place.
Two-electron charged self-assembled quantum dot molecules exhibit a decoherence-avoiding singlet-triplet qubit subspace and an efficient spin-photon interface. We demonstrate quantum entanglement between emitted photons and the spin-qubit after the emission event. We measure the overlap with a fully entangled state to be $69.5\pm2.7\,\%$, exceeding the threshold of $50\,\%$ required to prove the non-separability of the density matrix of the system. The photonic qubit is encoded in two photon states with an energy difference larger than the timing resolution of existing detectors. We devise a n…
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 …
Self-assembled quantum dots are ideal structures in which to test theories of open quantum systems: Confined exciton states can be coherently manipulated and their decoherence properties are dominated by interactions with acoustic phonons. We here describe the interaction of a pair of un-coupled, driven, quantum dot excitons with a common phonon environment, and find that this coupling effectively generates two kinds of interaction between the two quantum dots: An elastic coupling mediated by virtual phonons and an inelastic coupling mediated by real phonons. We show that both of these interac…
Realizing perfect two-photon entanglement from quantum dots has been a long-standing scientific challenge. It is generally thought that the nuclear spins limit the entanglement fidelity through spin flip dephasing processes. However, this assumption lacks experimental support. Here, we show dephasing-free two-photon entanglement from an Indium rich single quantum dot comprising of nuclear spin 9/2 when excited quasi-resonantly. This remarkable finding is based on a perfect match between our entanglement measurements with our model that assumes no dephasing and takes into account the detection …
We investigate the generation of multipartite entangled state in a system of N quantum dots embedded in a microcavity and examine the emergence of genuine multipartite entanglement by three different characterizations of entanglement. At certain times of dynamical evolution one can generate multipartite entangled coherent exciton states or multiqubit $W$ states by initially preparing the cavity field in a superposition of coherent states or the Fock state with one photon, respectively. Finally we study environmental effects on multipartite entanglement generation and find that the decay rate f…
We present a finite-size scaling analysis of the entanglement in a two-dimensional arrays of quantum dots modeled by the Hubbard Hamiltonian on a triangular lattice. Using multistage block renormalization group approach, we have found that there is an abrupt jump of the entanglement when a first-order quantum phase transition occurs. At the critical point, the entanglement is constant, independent of the block size.
We investigate entanglement transfer from a system of two spin-entangled electron-hole pairs, each placed in a separate single mode cavity, to the photons emitted during their recombination process. Dipole selection rules and a splitting between the light-hole and the heavy-hole subbands are the crucial ingredients establishing a one-to-one correspondence between electron spins and circular photon polarizations. To account for the measurement of the photons as well as dephasing effects, we choose a stochastic Schroedinger equation and a conditional master equation approach, respectively. The i…
We show that electron recombination using positively charged excitons in single quantum dots provides an efficient method to transfer entanglement from electron spins onto photon polarizations. We propose a scheme for the production of entangled four-photon states of GHZ type. From the GHZ state, two fully entangled photons can be obtained by a measurement of two photons in the linear polarization basis, even for quantum dots with observable fine structure splitting for neutral excitons and significant exciton spin decoherence. Because of the interplay of quantum mechanical selection rules and…
Multipartite entanglement is indispensable in the implementation of quantum technologies and the fundamental test of quantum mechanics. Here we study how the W state and W-like state may be generated in a quantum-dot array by controlling the coupling between an incident photon and the quantum dots on a waveguide. We also discuss how the coupling may be controlled to observe the sudden death of entanglement. Our work can find potential applications in quantum information processing.
The desire to have a source of single entangled photon pairs can be satisfied using single quantum dots as emitters. However, we are not bound to pursue only polarization entanglement, but can also exploit other degrees of freedom. In this chapter we focus on the time degree of freedom, to achieve so-called time-bin entanglement. This requires that we prepare the quantum dot coherently into the biexciton state and also build special interferometers for analysis. Finally this technique can be extended to achieve time-bin and polarization hyper-entanglement from a suitable quantum dot.
A system of two or more quantum dots interacting with a dissipative plasmonic nanostructure is investigated in detail by using a cavity quantum electrodynamics approach with a model Hamiltonian. We focus on determining and understanding system configurations that generate multiple bipartite quantum entanglements between the occupation states of the quantum dots. These configurations include allowing for the quantum dots to be asymmetrically coupled to the plasmonic system. Analytical solution of a simplified limit for an arbitrary number of quantum dots and numerical simulations and optimizati…
We study the dynamics of entanglement of two electron spins in two quantum dots, in which each electron is interacting with its nuclear spin environment. Focusing on the case of uncoupled dots, and starting from either Bell or Werner states of two qubits, we calculate the decay of entanglement due to the hyperfine interaction with the nuclei. We mostly focus on the regime of magnetic fields in which the bath-induced electron spin flips play a role, for example their presence leads to the appearance of entanglement sudden death at finite time for two qubits initialized in a Bell state. For thes…
We theoretically explore the possibility of creating spin quantum entanglement in a system of two electrons confined respectively in two vertically coupled quantum dots in the presence of Rashba type spin-orbit coupling. We find that the system can be described by a generalized Jaynes - Cummings model of two modes bosons interacting with two spins. The lower excitation states of this model are calculated to reveal the underlying physics of the far infrared absorption spectra. The analytic perturbation approach shows that an effective transverse coupling of spins can be obtained by eliminating …
We explore the possibility to entangle an excitonic two-level system in a semiconductor quantum dot (QD) with a cavity defined on a photonic crystal by sweeping the cavity frequency across its resonance with the exciton transition. The dynamic cavity detuning is established by a radio frequency surface acoustic wave (SAW). It induces Landau-Zener (LZ) transitions between the excitonic and the photonic degrees of freedom and thereby creates a superposition state. We optimize this scheme by using tailored Fourier-synthesized SAW pulses with up to five harmonics. The theoretical study is performe…
Entanglement-based quantum key distribution can enable secure communication in trusted node-free networks and over long distances. Although implementations exist both in fiber and in free space, the latter approach is often considered challenging due to environmental factors. Here, we implement a quantum communication protocol during daytime for the first time using a quantum dot source. This technology presents advantages in terms of narrower spectral bandwidth -- beneficial for filtering out sunlight -- and negligible multiphoton emission at peak brightness. We demonstrate continuous operati…
We present a scheme for efficient state teleportation and entanglement swapping using a single quantum-dot spin in an optical microcavity based on giant circular birefringence. State teleportation or entanglement swapping is heralded by the sequential detection of two photons, and is finished after the spin measurement. The spin-cavity unit works as a complete Bell-state analyzer with a built-in spin memory allowing loss-resistant repeater operation. This device can work in both the weak coupling and the strong coupling regime, but high efficiencies and high fidelities are only achievable when…
