Published papers

© 2020, The Author(s). Once the periodic properties of elements were unveiled, chemical behaviour could be understood in terms of the valence of atoms. Ideally, this rationale would extend to quantum dots, and quantum computation could be performed by merely controlling the outer-shell electrons of dot-based qubits. Imperfections in semiconductor materials disrupt this analogy, so real devices seldom display a systematic many-electron arrangement. We demonstrate here an electrostatically confined quantum dot that reveals a well defined shell structure. We observe four shells (31 electrons) with multiplicities given by spin and valley degrees of freedom. Various fillings containing a single valence electron—namely 1, 5, 13 and 25 electrons—are found to be potential qubits. An integrated micromagnet allows us to perform electrically-driven spin resonance (EDSR), leading to faster Rabi rotations and higher fidelity single qubit gates at higher shell states. We investigate the impact of orbital excitations on single qubits as a function of the dot deformation and exploit it for faster qubit control.

© 2018 American Physical Society. Preserving coherence long enough to perform meaningful calculations is one of the major challenges on the pathway to large-scale quantum-computer implementations. Noise coupled in from the environment is the main factor contributing to decoherence but can be mitigated via engineering design and control solutions. However, this is possible only after acquisition of a thorough understanding of the dominant noise sources and their spectrum. In the work reported here, we use a silicon quantum dot spin qubit as a metrological device to study the noise environment experienced by the qubit. We compare the sensitivity of this qubit to electrical noise with that of an implanted silicon-donor qubit in the same environment and measurement setup. Our results show that, as expected, a quantum dot spin qubit is more sensitive to electrical noise than a donor spin qubit due to the larger Stark shift, and the noise-spectroscopy data show pronounced charge-noise contributions at intermediate frequencies (2-20 kHz).

© 2018 American Physical Society. The understanding of weak measurements and interaction-free measurements has greatly expanded the conceptual and experimental toolbox to explore the quantum world. Here we demonstrate single-shot variable-strength weak measurements of the electron and nuclear spin states of a P31 single-atom donor in silicon. We first show how the partial collapse of the nuclear spin due to measurement can be used to coherently rotate the spin to a desired pure state. We explicitly demonstrate that phase coherence is preserved with high fidelity throughout multiple sequential single-shot weak measurements and that the partial state collapse can be reversed. Second, we use the relation between measurement strength and perturbation of the nuclear state as a physical meter to extract the tunnel rates between the P31 donor and a nearby electron reservoir from data conditioned on observing no tunneling events. Our experiments open avenues to measurement-based state preparation, steering and feedback protocols for spin systems in the solid state, and highlight the fundamental connection between information gain and state modification in quantum mechanics.

© 2018 IEEE. We present a scalable strategy to manufacture quantum computer devices, by encoding quantum information in the combined electron-nuclear spin state of individual ion-implanted phosphorus dopant atoms in silicon. Our strategy allows a typical pitch between quantum bits of order 200 nm, and retains compatibility with the standard fabrication processes adopted in classical CMOS nanoelectronic devices. We theoretically predict fast and high-fidelity quantum logic operations, and present preliminary experimental progress towards the realization of a 'flip-flop' qubit system.

© 2019 American Physical Society. We analyze the electron spin relaxation rate 1/T1 of individual ion-implanted P31 donors in a large set of metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) silicon nanoscale devices, with the aim of identifying spin relaxation mechanisms peculiar to the environment of the spins. The measurements are conducted at low temperatures (T≈100 mK) as a function of external magnetic field B0 and donor electrochemical potential μD. We observe a magnetic field dependence of the form 1/T1B05 for B03 T, corresponding to the phonon-induced relaxation typical of donors in the bulk. However, the relaxation rate varies by up to two orders of magnitude between different devices. We attribute these differences to variations in lattice strain at the location of the donor. For B03T, the relaxation rate changes to 1/T1B0 for two devices. This is consistent with relaxation induced by evanescent-wave Johnson noise created by the metal structures fabricated above the donors. At such low fields, where T1>1s, we also observe and quantify the spurious increase of 1/T1 when the electrochemical potential of the spin excited state |↑) comes in proximity to empty states in the charge reservoir, leading to spin-dependent tunneling that resets the spin to |↓). These results provide precious insights into the microscopic phenomena that affect spin relaxation in MOS nanoscale devices, and provide strategies for engineering spin qubits with improved spin lifetimes.

© 2019, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited. Universal quantum computation will require qubit technology based on a scalable platform1, together with quantum error correction protocols that place strict limits on the maximum infidelities for one- and two-qubit gate operations2,3. Although various qubit systems have shown high fidelities at the one-qubit level4–10, the only solid-state qubits manufactured using standard lithographic techniques that have demonstrated two-qubit fidelities near the fault-tolerance threshold6 have been in superconductor systems. Silicon-based quantum dot qubits are also amenable to large-scale fabrication and can achieve high single-qubit gate fidelities (exceeding 99.9 per cent) using isotopically enriched silicon11,12. Two-qubit gates have now been demonstrated in a number of systems13–15, but as yet an accurate assessment of their fidelities using Clifford-based randomized benchmarking, which uses sequences of randomly chosen gates to measure the error, has not been achieved. Here, for qubits encoded on the electron spin states of gate-defined quantum dots, we demonstrate Bell state tomography with fidelities ranging from 80 to 89 per cent, and two-qubit randomized benchmarking with an average Clifford gate fidelity of 94.7 per cent and an average controlled-rotation fidelity of 98 per cent. These fidelities are found to be limited by the relatively long gate times used here compared with the decoherence times of the qubits. Silicon qubit designs employing fast gate operations with high Rabi frequencies16,17, together with advanced pulsing techniques18, should therefore enable much higher fidelities in the near future.

© 2020 Author(s). A single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond is a prime candidate for a solid-state quantum magnetometer capable of detecting single nuclear spins with prospective application to nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) at the nanoscale. Nonetheless, an NV magnetometer is still less accessible to many chemists and biologists as its experimental setup and operational principle are starkly different from those of conventional NMR. Here, we design, construct, and operate a compact tabletop-sized system for quantum sensing with a single NV center, built primarily from commercially available optical components and electronics. We show that our setup can implement state-of-the-art quantum sensing protocols that enable the detection of single 13C nuclear spins in diamond and the characterization of their interaction parameters, as well as the detection of a small ensemble of proton nuclear spins on the diamond surface. This article provides extensive discussions on the details of the setup and the experimental procedures, and our system will be reproducible by those who have not worked on the NV centers previously.