We predict a gigantically long lifetime of the first excited state of an interstitial lithium donor in silicon. The nature of this effect roots in the anomalous level structure of the {\em 1s} Li manifold under external stress. Namely, the coupling between the lowest two states of the opposite parity is very weak and occurs via intervalley phonon transitions only. We propose to use these states under the controlled ac and dc stress to process quantum information. We find an unusual form of the elastic-dipole interaction between %the electronic transitions in different donors. This interaction scales with the inter-donor distance $R$ as $R^{-3}$ or $R^{-5}$ for the transitions between the states of the same or opposite parity, respectively. The long-range $R^{-3}$ interaction provides a high fidelity mechanism for 2-qubit operations.
Long-lived state of a helium-like magnesium donor in silicon
Institute for Physics of Microstructures of the Russian Academy of Sciences（俄罗斯科学院微结构物理研究所）；Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod（下诺夫哥罗德罗巴切夫斯基国立大学）；Ioffe Institute（约费研究所）；Institut für Kristallzüchtung (IKZ)（晶体生长研究所）
We investigate time-dependent electron transfer (ET) in benchmark donor-bridge-acceptor systems. For the small bridge sizes studied, we obtain results far different from the perturbation theory which underlies scattering-based approaches, notably a lack of destructive interference in the ET for certain arrangements of bridge molecules. We also calculate wavepacket transmission in the non-steady-state regime, finding a featureless spectrum, while for the current we find two types of transmission: sequential and direct, where in the latter, the current transmission increases as a function of the…
We propose a scheme for quantum information processing based on donor electron spins in semiconductors, with an architecture complementary to the original Kane proposal. We show that a naive implementation of electron spin qubits provides only modest improvement over the Kane scheme, however through the introduction of global gate control we are able to take full advantage of the fast electron evolution timescales. We estimate that the latent clock speed is 100-1000 times that of the nuclear spin quantum computer with the ratio $T_{2}/T_{ops}$ approaching the $10^{6}$ level.
Through the introduction of a new electron spin transport mechanism, a 2D donor electron spin quantum computer architecture is proposed. This design addresses major technical issues in the original Kane design, including spatial oscillations in the exchange coupling strength and cross-talk in gate control. It is also expected that the introduction of a degree of non-locality in qubit gates will significantly improve the scaling fault-tolerant threshold over the nearest-neighbour linear array.
We propose a magnetic resonance force microscopy (MRFM)-based nuclear spin quantum computer using tellurium impurities in silicon. This approach to quantum computing combines the well-developed silicon technology with expected advances in MRFM.
We demonstrate how gradient ascent pulse engineering optimal control methods can be implemented on donor electron spin qubits in Si semiconductors with an architecture complementary to the original Kane's proposal. We focus on the high-fidelity controlled-NOT (CNOT) gate and explicitly find its digitized control sequences by optimizing its fidelity over the external controls of the hyperfine A and exchange J interactions. This high-fidelity CNOT gate has an error of about $10^{-6}$, below the error threshold required for fault-tolerant quantum computation, and its operation time of 100ns is ab…
Donor impurity spins in silicon-28 are highly competitive qubits for upcoming solid-state quantum technologies, yet a proven scalable strategy for multi-qubit devices remains conspicuously absent. These CMOS-compatible, atomically identical qubits offer significant advantages including 3-hour coherence ($T_2$) lifetimes, as well as simultaneous qubit initialization, manipulation and readout fidelities near $\sim\!99.9\%$. These properties meet the requirements for many modern quantum error correction protocols, which are essential for constructing large-scale universal quantum technologies. Ho…
The possibility of quantum computing with spins in germanium nanoscale transistors has recently attracted interest since it promises highly tuneable qubits that have encouraging coherence times. We here present the first complete theory of the orbital states of Ge donor electrons, and use it to show that Ge could have significant advantages over silicon in the implementation of a donor-based quantum processor architecture. We show that the stronger spin-orbit interaction and the larger electron donor wave functions for Ge donors allow for greater tuning of the single qubit energy than for thos…
Coherent Tunneling Adiabatic Passage (CTAP) has been proposed as a long-range physical qubit transport mechanism in solid-state quantum computing architectures. Although the mechanism can be implemented in either a chain of quantum dots or donors, a 1D chain of donors in Si is of particular interest due to the natural confining potential of donors that can in principle help reduce the gate densities in solid-state quantum computing architectures. Using detailed atomistic modeling, we investigate CTAP in a more realistic triple donor system in the presence of inevitable fabrication imperfection…
The Stark shift of the hyperfine coupling constant is investigated for a P donor in Si far below the ionization regime in the presence of interfaces using Tight-binding and Band Minima Basis approaches and compared to the recent precision measurements. The TB electronic structure calculations included over 3 million atoms. In contrast to previous effective mass based results, the quadratic Stark coefficient obtained from both theories agrees closely with the experiments. This work represents the most sensitive and precise comparison between theory and experiment for single donor spin control. …
A long-lived multi-mode qubit register is an enabling technology for modular quantum computing architectures. For interfacing with superconducting qubits, such a quantum memory should be able to store incoming quantum microwave fields at the single-photon level for long periods of time, and retrieve them on-demand. Here, we demonstrate the partial absorption of a train of weak microwave fields in an ensemble of bismuth donor spins in silicon, their storage for 100 ms, and their retrieval, using a Hahn-echo-like protocol. The long storage time is obtained by biasing the bismuth donors at a cloc…
Donor electron spins in semiconductors make exceptional quantum bits because of their long coherence times and compatibility with industrial fabrication techniques. Despite many advances in donor-based qubit technology, it remains difficult to selectively manipulate single donor electron spins. Here, we show that by replacing the prevailing semiconductor host material (silicon) with germanium, donor electron spin qubits can be electrically tuned by more than an ensemble linewidth, making them compatible with gate addressable quantum computing architectures. Using X-band pulsed electron spin re…
It has been over ten years since Kane's influential proposal for a silicon-based nuclear spin quantum computer using phosphorous donors. Since then, silicon-based architectures have been refined as the experimental challenges associated with the original proposal have become better understood, while simultaneously a number of powerful and generic models for quantum computation have emerged. Here, I discuss how the cluster state or "one-way" model for quantum computing might be advantageously applied to donors in silicon, with the potential to substantially reduce the practical requirements of …
The silicon-based quantum computer proposal has been one of the intensely pursued ideas during the past three years. Here we calculate the donor electron exchange in silicon and germanium, and demonstrate an atomic-scale challenge for quantum computing in Si (and Ge), as the six (four) conduction band minima in Si (Ge) lead to inter-valley electronic interferences, generating strong oscillations in the exchange splitting of two-donor two-electron states. Donor positioning with atomic scale precision within the unit cell thus becomes a decisive factor in determining the strength of the exchange…
Developing devices that can reliably and accurately demonstrate the principles of superposition and entanglement is an on-going challenge for the quantum computing community. Modeling and simulation offer attractive means of testing early device designs and establishing expectations for operational performance. However, the complex integrated material systems required by quantum device designs are not captured by any single existing computational modeling method. We examine the development and analysis of a multi-staged computational workflow that can be used to design and characterize silicon…
Electric control of individual atoms or molecules in a solid-state system offers a promising way to bring quantum mechanical functionalities into electronics. This idea has recently come into the reach of the established domain of silicon technology, leading to the realization of single-atom transistors and to the first measurements of electron spin dynamics in single donors. Here we show that we can electrically couple two donors embedded in a multi-gate silicon transistor, and induce coherent oscillations in their charge states by means of microwave signals. We measure single-electron tunnel…
Control of hyperfine interactions is a fundamental requirement for quantum computing architecture schemes based on shallow donors in silicon. However, at present, there is lacking an atomistic approach including critical effects of central-cell corrections and non-static screening of the donor potential capable of describing the hyperfine interaction in the presence of both strain and electric fields in realistically sized devices. We establish and apply a theoretical framework, based on atomistic tight-binding theory, to quantitatively determine the strain and electric field dependent hyperfi…
We propose a scheme for universal quantum computing based on Kramers rare-earth ions. Their nuclear spins in the presence of a Zeeman-split electronic crystal field ground state act as 'passive' qubits which store quantum information. The qubits can be activated optically by fast coherent transitions to excited crystal field states with a magnetic moment. The dipole interaction between these states is used to implement CNOT gates. We compare our proposal with a similar one based on phosphorus donor atoms in silicon and discuss the significantly improved CNOT gate time as compared to rare-earth…
Recent experimental progress in controlling neutral group-II atoms for optical clocks, and in the production of degenerate gases with group-II atoms has given rise to novel opportunities to address challenges in quantum computing and quantum simulation. In these systems, it is possible to encode qubits in nuclear spin states, which are decoupled from the electronic state in the $^1$S$_0$ ground state and the long-lived $^3$P$_0$ metastable state on the clock transition. This leads to quantum computing scenarios where qubits are stored in long lived nuclear spin states, while electronic states …
The long term scaling prospects for solid-state quantum computing architectures relies heavily on the ability to simply and reliably measure and control the coherent electron interaction strength, known as the tunnel coupling, $t_c$. Here, we describe a method to extract the $t_c$ between two quantum dots (QDs) utilising their different tunnel rates to a reservoir. We demonstrate the technique on a few donor triple QD tunnel coupled to a nearby single-electron transistor (SET) in silicon. The device was patterned using scanning tunneling microscopy-hydrogen lithography allowing for a direct me…
The electronic and nuclear spin degrees of freedom for donor impurities in semiconductors form ultra coherent two-level systems that are useful for quantum information applications. Spins naturally have magnetic dipoles, so alternating current (AC) magnetic fields are frequently used to drive spin transitions and perform quantum gates. These fields can be difficult to spatially confine to single donor qubits so alternative methods of control such as AC electric field driven spin resonance are desirable. However, donor spin qubits do not have electric dipole moments so that they can not normall…
Long coherence times and fast gate operations are desirable but often conflicting requirements for physical qubits. This conflict can be resolved by resorting to fast qubits for operations, and by storing their state in a `quantum memory' while idle. The $^{31}$P donor in silicon comes naturally equipped with a fast qubit (the electron spin) and a long-lived qubit (the $^{31}$P nuclear spin), coexisting in a bound state at cryogenic temperatures. Here, we demonstrate storage and retrieval of quantum information from a single donor electron spin to its host phosphorus nucleus in isotopically-en…
We suggest an architecture for quantum computing with spin-pair encoded qubits in silicon. Electron-nuclear spin-pairs are controlled by a dc magnetic field and electrode-switched on and off hyperfine interaction. This digital processing is insensitive to tuning errors and easy to model. Electron shuttling between donors enables multi-qubit logic. These hydrogenic spin qubits are transferable to nuclear spin-pairs, which have long coherence times, and electron spin-pairs, which are ideally suited for measurement and initialization. The architecture is scalable to highly parallel operation.
Nuclear spins were among the first physical platforms to be considered for quantum information processing, because of their exceptional quantum coherence and atomic-scale footprint. However, their full potential for quantum computing has not yet been realized, due to the lack of methods to link nuclear qubits within a scalable device combined with multi-qubit operations with sufficient fidelity to sustain fault-tolerant quantum computation. Here we demonstrate universal quantum logic operations using a pair of ion-implanted 31P donor nuclei in a silicon nanoelectronic device. A nuclear two-qub…
Three-dimensional arrays of silicon transistors increase the density of bits. Solid-state qubits are much larger so could benefit even more from using the third dimension given that useful fault-tolerant quantum computing will require at least 100,000 physical qubits and perhaps one billion. Here we use laser writing to create 3D arrays of nitrogen-vacancy centre (NVC) qubits in diamond. This would allow 5 million qubits inside a commercially available 4.5x4.5x0.5 mm diamond based on five nuclear qubits per NVC and allowing $(10 μm)^3$ per NVC to leave room for our laser-written electrical con…
A spin qubit in semiconductor quantum dots holds promise for quantum information processing for scalability and long coherence time. An important semiconductor qubit system is a double quantum dot trapping two electrons or holes, whose spin states encode either a singlet-triplet qubit or two single-spin qubits coupled by exchange interaction. In this article, we report progress on spin dephasing of two exchange-coupled spins in a double quantum dot. We first discuss the schemes of two-qubit gates and qubit encodings in gate-defined quantum dots or donor atoms based on the exchange interaction.…
The use of buried dopants to construct quantum-dot cellular automata is investigated as an alternative to conventional electronic devices for information transport and elementary computation. This provides a limit in terms of miniaturisation for this type of system as each potential well is formed by a single dopant atom. As an example, phosphorous donors in silicon are found to have good energy level separation with incoherent switching times of the order of microseconds. However, we also illustrate the possibility of ultra-fast quantum coherent switching via adiabatic evolution. The switchin…
We study the quantum computational power of a generic class of anisotropic solid state Hamiltonians. A universal set of encoded logic operations are found which do away with difficult-to-implement single-qubit gates in a number of quantum computer proposals, e.g., quantum dots and donor atom spins with anisotropic exchange coupling, quantum Hall systems, and electrons floating on helium.We show how to make the corresponding Hamiltonians universal by encoding one qubit into two physical qubits, and by controlling nearest neighbor interactions.
Quantum computers, much like their classical counterparts, will likely benefit from flexible qubit encodings that can be matched to different tasks. For trapped ion quantum processors, a common way to access multiple encodings is to use multiple, co-trapped atomic species. Here, we outline an alternative approach that allows flexible encoding capabilities in single-species systems through the use of long-lived metastable states as an effective, programmable second species. We describe the set of additional trapped ion primitives needed to enable this protocol and show that they are compatible …
We apply the full power of modern electronic band structure engineering and epitaxial heterostructures to design a transistor that can sense and control a single donor electron spin. Spin resonance transistors may form the technological basis for quantum information processing. One and two qubit operations are performed by applying a gate bias. The bias electric field pulls the electron wave function away from the dopant ion into layers of different alloy composition. Owing to the variation of the g-factor (Si:g=1.995, Ge:g=1.563), this displacement changes the spin Zeeman energy, allowing sin…
Recent experimental progress with Alkaline-Earth atoms has opened the door to quantum computing schemes in which qubits are encoded in long-lived nuclear spin states, and the metastable electronic states of these species are used for manipulation and readout of the qubits. Here we discuss a variant of these schemes, in which gate operations are performed in nuclear-spin-dependent optical lattices, formed by near-resonant coupling to the metastable excited state. This provides an alternative to a previous scheme [A. J. Daley, M. M. Boyd, J. Ye, and P. Zoller, Phys. Rev. Lett 101, 170504 (2008)]…
As it has been demonstrated that trapped ion systems have unmatched long-lived quantum-bit (qubit) coherence and can support high-fidelity quantum manipulations, how to scale up the system size becomes an inevitable task for practical purposes. In this work, we theoretically analyse the physical limitation of scalability with a trapped ion array, and propose a feasible scheme of architecture that in principle allows an arbitrary number of ion qubits, for which the overhead only scales linearly with the system size. This scheme relies on the combined ideas of a trap architecture of tunable size…
Rydberg atom arrays are a leading platform for quantum computing and simulation, combining strong interactions with highly coherent operations and flexible geometries. However, the achievable fidelities are limited by the finite lifetime of the Rydberg states, as well as technical imperfections such as atomic motion. In this work, we propose a novel approach to Rydberg atom arrays using long-lived circular Rydberg states in optical traps. Based on the extremely long lifetime of these states, exceeding seconds in cryogenic microwave cavities that suppress radiative transitions, and gate protoco…
We propose a new quantum-computing scheme using ultracold neutral ytterbium atoms in an optical lattice. The nuclear Zeeman sublevels define a qubit. This choice avoids the natural phase evolution due to the magnetic dipole interaction between qubits. The Zeeman sublevels with large magnetic moments in the long-lived metastable state are also exploited to address individual atoms and to construct a controlled-multiqubit gate. Estimated parameters required for this scheme show that this proposal is scalable and experimentally feasible.
Spatially Dense, Continuous-Variable Quantum Computing with Solid State Spin Nonlinearities
Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院士兵纳米技术研究所）；Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院电子研究实验室）；DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory（美国陆军研究实验室）
Photonic qubits memories are essential ingredients of numerous quantum networking protocols. The ideal situation features quantum computing nodes that are efficiently connected to quantum communication channels via quantum interfaces. The nodes contain a set of long-lived matter qubits, the channels support the propagation of light qubits, and the interface couples light and matter qubits. Towards this vision, we here demonstrate a random-access multi-qubit write-read memory for photons using two rubidium atoms coupled to the same mode of an optical cavity, a setup which is known to feature qu…
We review the progress and main challenges in implementing large-scale quantum computing by optical control of electron spins in quantum dots (QDs). Relevant systems include self-assembled QDs of III-V or II-VI compound semiconductors (such as InGaAs and CdSe), monolayer fluctuation QDs in compound semiconductor quantum wells, and impurity centers in solids such as P-donors in silicon and nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond. The decoherence of the electron spin qubits is discussed and various schemes for countering the decoherence problem are reviewed. We put forward designs of local nodes con…
We propose to use a new platform - ultracold polar molecules - for quantum computing with switchable interactions. The on/off switch is accomplished by selective excitation of one of the "0" or "1" qubits - long-lived molecular states - to an "excited" molecular state with a considerably different dipole moment. We describe various schemes based on this switching of dipolar interactions where the selective excitation between ground and excited states is accomplished via optical, micro-wave, or electric fields. We also generalize the schemes to take advantage of the dipole blockade mechanism wh…
Some of the most promising proposals for scalable solid-state quantum computing, e.g., those using electron spins in quantum dots or donor electron or nuclear spins in Si, rely on a two-qubit quantum gate that is ideally generated by an isotropic exchange interaction. However, an anisotropic perturbation arising from spin-orbit coupling is inevitably present. Previous studies focused on removing the anisotropy. Here we introduce a new universal set of quantum logic gates that takes advantage of the anisotropic perturbation. The price is a constant but modest factor in additional pulses. The ga…
We propose a mechanism of long-range coherent coupling between nuclear spins to be used as qubits in solid-state semiconductor-heterojunction quantum information processing devices. The coupling is via localized donor electrons which in turn interact with the two-dimensional electron gas. An effective two-spin interaction Hamiltonian is derived and the coupling strength is evaluated. We also discuss mechanisms of qubit decoherence and consider possibilities for gate control of the interaction between neighboring qubits. The resulting quantum computing scheme retains all the gate-control and me…
We introduce a method for high-fidelity quantum state transduction between a superconducting microwave qubit and the ground state spin system of a solid-state artificial atom, mediated via an acoustic bus connected by piezoelectric transducers. Applied to present-day experimental parameters for superconducting circuit qubits and diamond silicon vacancy centers in an optimized phononic cavity, we estimate quantum state transduction with fidelity exceeding 99\% at a MHz-scale bandwidth. By combining the complementary strengths of superconducting circuit quantum computing and artificial atoms, th…
