We demonstrate optical control of the geometric phase acquired by one of the spin states of an electron confined in a charge-tunable InAs quantum dot via cyclic 2pi excitations of an optical transition in the dot. In the presence of a constant in-plane magnetic field, these optically induced geometric phases result in the effective rotation of the spin about the magnetic field axis and manifest as phase shifts in the spin quantum beat signal generated by two time-delayed circularly polarized optical pulses. The geometric phases generated in this manner more generally perform the role of a spin phase gate, proving potentially useful for quantum information applications.
We report a large g-factor tunability of a single hole spin in an InGaAs quantum dot via an electric field. The magnetic field lies in the in-plane direction x, the direction required for a coherent hole spin. The electrical field lies along the growth direction z and is changed over a large range, 100 kV/cm. Both electron and hole g-factors are determined by high resolution laser spectroscopy with resonance fluorescence detection. This, along with the low electrical-noise environment, gives very high quality experimental results. The hole g-factor g_xh depends linearly on the electric field Fz, dg_xh/dFz = (8.3 +/- 1.2)* 10^-4 cm/kV, whereas the electron g-factor g_xe is independent of electric field, dg_xe/dFz = (0.1 +/- 0.3)* 10^-4 cm/kV (results averaged over a number of quantum dots). The dependence of g_xh on Fz is well reproduced by a 4x4 k.p model demonstrating that the electric field sensitivity arises from a combination of soft hole confining potential, an In concentration gradient and a strong dependence of material parameters on In concentration. The electric field sensitivity of the hole spin can be exploited for electrically-driven hole spin rotations via the g-tensor modulation technique and based on these results, a hole spin coupling as large as ~ 1 GHz is expected to be envisaged.
We demonstrate fast initialization of a single hole spin captured in an InGaAs quantum dot with a fidelity F>99% by applying a magnetic field parallel to the growth direction. We show that the fidelity of the hole spin, prepared by ionization of a photo-generated electron-hole pair, is limited by the precession of the exciton spin due to the anisotropic exchange interaction.
Coherent rotations of single spin-based qubits may be accomplished electrically at fixed Zeeman energy with a qubit defined solely within a single electrostatically-defined quantum dot; the $g$-factor and the external magnetic field are kept constant. All that is required to be varied are the voltages on metallic gates which effectively change the shape of the elliptic quantum dot. The pseudospin-1/2 qubit is constructed from the two-dimensional $S=1/2$, $S_z=-1/2$ subspace of three interacting electrons in a two-dimensional potential well. Rotations are created by altering the direction of the pseudomagnetic field through changes in the shape of the confinement potential. By deriving an exact analytic solution to the long-range Coulomb interaction matrix elements, we calculate explicitly the range of magnitudes and directions the pseudomagnetic field can take. Numerical estimates are given for {GaAs}.
We report optically detected nuclear magnetic resonance (ODNMR) measurements on small ensembles of nuclear spins in single GaAs quantum dots. Using ODNMR we make direct measurements of the inhomogeneous Knight field from a photo-excited electron which acts on the nuclei in the dot. The resulting shifts of the NMR peak can be optically controlled by varying the electron occupancy and its spin orientation, and lead to strongly asymmetric lineshapes at high optical excitation. The all-optical control of the NMR lineshape will enable position-selective control of small groups of nuclear spins in a dot. Our calculations also show that the asymmetric NMR peak lineshapes can provide information on the volume of the electron wave-function, and may be used for measurements of non-uniform distributions of atoms in nano-structures.
We identify theoretically the geometric phases of the electrons spin that can be detected in measurements of charge and spin transport through Aharonov-Bohm interferometers threaded by a magnetic flux $Phi$ (in units of the flux quantum) in which both the Rashba spin-orbit and Zeeman interactions are active. We show that the combined effect of these two interactions is to produce a $sin(Phi)$ [in addition to the usual $cos(Phi)$] dependence of the magnetoconductance, whose amplitude is proportional to the Zeeman field. Therefore the magnetoconductance, though an even function of the magnetic field is not a periodic function of it, and the widely-used concept of a phase shift in the Aharonov-Bohm oscillations, as indicated in previous work, is not applicable. We find the directions of the spin-polarizations in the system, and show that in general the spin currents are not conserved, implying the generation of magnetization in the terminals attached to the interferometer.