We present a comprehensive study of the optical transitions and selection rules of variably charged single self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots. We apply high resolution polarization sensitive photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy to the same quantum dot for three different charge states: neutral and negatively or positively charged by one additional electron or hole. From the detailed analysis of the excitation spectra, a full understanding of the single-carrier energy levels and the interactions between carriers in these levels is extracted for the first time.
We report on the observation of photoluminescence from positive, neutral and negative charge states of single semiconductor quantum dots. For this purpose we designed a structure enabling optical injection of a controlled unequal number of negative electrons and positive holes into an isolated InGaAs quantum dot embedded in a GaAs matrix. Thereby, we optically produced the charge states -3, -2, -1, 0, +1 and +2. The injected carriers form confined collective artificial atoms and molecules states in the quantum dot. We resolve spectrally and temporally the photoluminescence from an optically excited quantum dot and use it to identify collective states, which contain charge of one type, coupled to few charges of the other type. These states can be viewed as the artificial analog of charged atoms such as H$^{-}$, H$^{-2}$, H$^{-3}$, and charged molecules such as H$_{2}^{+}$ and H$_{3}^{+2}$. Unlike higher dimensionality systems, where negative or positive charging always results in reduction of the emission energy due to electron-hole pair recombination, in our dots, negative charging reduces the emission energy, relative to the charge-neutral case, while positive charging increases it. Pseudopotential model calculations reveal that the enhanced spatial localization of the hole-wavefunction, relative to that of the electron in these dots, is the reason for this effect.
We investigate the charging dynamics in epitaxially grown InAs quantum dots under resonant excitation with and without additional low-power above-band excitation. Time-resolved resonance fluorescence from a charged exciton (trion) transition is recorded as the above-band excitation is modulated on and off. The fluorescence intensity varies as the QD changes from charged to neutral and back due to the influence of the above-band excitation. We fit the transients of the time-resolved resonance fluorescence with models that represent the charging and neutralization processes. The time dependence of the transients indicate that Auger recombination of resonantly excited trions is largely responsible for neutralization of the charged state when the above-band excitation is off. The addition of above-band excitation revives the resonance fluorescence signal from the trion transition. We conclude that the above-band laser excites charges that relax into the bound state of the quantum dot via two different charge transport processes. The captured charges return the QD to its initial charge state and allow resonant excitation of the trion transition. The time dependence of one charge transport process is consistent with ballistic transport of charge carriers excited non-local to the QD via above-band excitation. We attribute the second charge transport process to carrier migration through a stochastic collection of weakly-binding sites, resulting in sub-diffusion-like dynamics.
We characterize the positively charged exciton (X1+) in single InGaAs quantum dots using resonant laser spectroscopy. Three samples with different dopant species (Be or C as acceptors, Si as a donor) are compared. The p-doped samples exhibit larger inhomogeneous broadening (x3) and smaller absorption contrast (x10) than the n-doped sample. For X1+ in the Be-doped sample, a dot dependent non-linear Fano effect is observed, demonstrating coupling to degenerate continuum states. However, for the C-doped sample the X1+ lineshape and saturation broadening follows isolated atomic transition behaviour. This C-doped device structure is useful for single hole spin initialization, manipulation, and measurement.
We construct an optimal set of single-particle states for few-electron quantum dots (QDs) using the method of natural orbitals (NOs). The NOs include also the effects of the Coulomb repulsion between electrons. We find that they agree well with the noniteracting orbitals for GaAs QDs of realistic parameters, while the Coulomb interactions only rescale the radius of the NOs compared to the noninteracting case. We use NOs to show that four-electron QDs are less susceptible to charge noise than their two-electron counterparts.
Electron spins in silicon quantum dots are promising qubits due to their long coherence times, scalable fabrication, and potential for all-electrical control. However, charge noise in the host semiconductor presents a major obstacle to achieving high-fidelity single- and two-qubit gates in these devices. In this work, we measure the charge-noise spectrum of a Si/SiGe singlet-triplet qubit over more than 13 decades in frequency using a combination of methods, including dynamically-decoupled exchange oscillations with up to 512 $pi$ pulses during the qubit evolution. The charge noise is colored across the entire frequency range of our measurements, although the spectral exponent changes with frequency. Moreover, the charge-noise spectrum inferred from conductance measurements of a proximal sensor quantum dot agrees with that inferred from coherent oscillations of the singlet-triplet qubit, suggesting that simple transport measurements can accurately characterize the charge noise over a wide frequency range in Si/SiGe quantum dots.