No Arabic abstract
The compound semiconductor gallium arsenide (GaAs) provides an ultra-clean platform for storing and manipulating quantum information, encoded in the charge or spin states of electrons confined in nanostructures. The absence of inversion symmetry in the zinc-blende crystal structure of GaAs however, results in strong piezoelectric coupling between lattice acoustic phonons and electrons, a potential hindrance for quantum computing architectures that can be charge-sensitive during certain operations. Here we examine phonon generation in a GaAs double dot, configured as a single- or two-electron charge qubit, and driven by the application of microwaves via surface gates. In a process that is a microwave analog of the Raman effect, stimulated phonon emission is shown to produce population inversion of a two-level system and provides spectroscopic signatures of the phononic environment created by the nanoscale device geometry.
We study phonon emission in a GaAs/AlGaAs double quantum dot by monitoring the tunneling of a single electron between the two dots. We prepare the system such that a known amount of energy is emitted in the transition process. The energy is converted into lattice vibrations and the resulting tunneling rate depends strongly on the phonon scattering and its effective phonon spectral density. We are able to fit the measured transition rates and see imprints of interference of phonons with themselves causing oscillations in the transition rates.
A double quantum dot device is a tunable two-level system for electronic energy states. A dc electron current directly measures the rates for elastic and inelastic transitions between the two levels. For inelastic transitions energy is exchanged with bosonic degrees of freedom in the environment. The inelastic transition rates are well described by the Einstein coefficients, relating absorption with stimulated and spontaneous emission. The most effectively coupled bosons in the specific environment of our semiconductor device are acoustic phonons. The experiments demonstrate the importance of vacuum fluctuations in the environment for little circuits of coherent quantum devices.
Studies of thermally induced transport in nanostructures provide access to an exciting regime where fluctuations are relevant, enabling the investigation of fundamental thermodynamic concepts and the realization of thermal energy harvesters. We study a serial double quantum dot formed in an InAs/InP nanowire coupled to two electron reservoirs. By means of a specially designed local metallic joule-heater, the temperature of the phonon bath in the vicinity of the double quantum dot can be enhanced. This results in phonon-assisted transport, enabling the conversion of local heat into electrical power in a nano-sized heat engine. Simultaneously, the electron temperatures of the reservoirs are affected, resulting in conventional thermoelectric transport. By detailed modelling and experimentally tuning the interdot coupling we disentangle both effects. Furthermore, we show that phonon-assisted transport gives access to the energy of excited states. Our findings demonstrate the versatility of our design to study fluctuations and fundamental nanothermodynamics.
Quantum confinement leads to the formation of discrete electronic states in quantum dots. Here we probe electron-phonon interactions in a suspended InAs nanowire double quantum dot (DQD) that is electric-dipole coupled to a microwave cavity. We apply a finite bias across the wire to drive a steady state population in the DQD excited state, enabling a direct measurement of the electron-phonon coupling strength at the DQD transition energy. The amplitude and phase response of the cavity field exhibit features that are periodic in the DQD energy level detuning due to the phonon modes of the nanowire. The observed cavity phase shift is consistent with theory that predicts a renormalization of the cavity center frequency by coupling to phonons.
We demonstrate the Josephson effect in a serial double quantum dot defined in a nanowire with epitaxial superconducting leads. The supercurrent stability diagram adopts a honeycomb pattern with electron-hole and left-right reflection symmetry. We observe sharp discontinuities in the magnitude of the critical current, $I_c$, as a function of dot occupation, related to doublet to singlet ground state transitions. Detuning of the energy levels offers a tuning knob for $I_c$, which attains a maximum at zero detuning. The consistency between experiment and theory indicates that our device is a faithful realization of the two-impurity Anderson model.