No Arabic abstract
Exchange coupling is a key ingredient for spin-based quantum technologies since it can be used to entangle spin qubits and create logical spin qubits. However, the influence of the electronic valley degree of freedom in silicon on exchange interactions is presently the subject of important open questions. Here we investigate the influence of valleys on exchange in a coupled donor/quantum dot system, a basic building block of recently proposed schemes for robust quantum information processing. Using a scanning tunneling microscope tip to position the quantum dot with sub-nm precision, we find a near monotonic exchange characteristic where lattice-aperiodic modulations associated with valley degrees of freedom comprise less than 2~% of exchange. From this we conclude that intravalley tunneling processes that preserve the donors $pm x$ and $pm y$ valley index are filtered out of the interaction with the $pm z$ valley quantum dot, and that the $pm x$ and $pm y$ intervalley processes where the electron valley index changes are weak. Complemented by tight-binding calculations of exchange versus donor depth, the demonstrated electrostatic tunability of donor/QD exchange can be used to compensate the remaining intravalley $pm z$ oscillations to realise uniform interactions in an array of highly coherent donor spins.
Spins of donor electrons and nuclei in silicon are promising quantum bit (qubit) candidates which combine long coherence times with the fabrication finesse of the silicon nanotechnology industry. We outline a potentially scalable spin qubit architecture where donor nuclear and electron spins are coupled to spins of electrons in quantum dots and discuss requirements for donor placement aligned to quantum dots by single ion implantation.
The valley-orbit coupling in a few-electron Si quantum dot is expected to be a function of its occupation number N. We study the spectrum of multivalley Si quantum dots for 2 <= N <= 4, showing that, counterintuitively, electron-electron interaction effects on the valley-orbit coupling are negligible. For N=2 they are suppressed by valley interference, for N=3 they vanish due to spinor overlaps, and for N = 4 they cancel between different pairs of electrons. To corroborate our theoretical findings, we examine the experimental energy spectrum of a few-electron metal-oxide-semiconductor quantum dot. The measured spin-valley state filling sequence in a magnetic field reveals that the valley-orbit coupling is definitively unaffected by the occupation number.
Donors in silicon are now demonstrated as one of the leading candidates for implementing qubits and quantum information processing. Single qubit operations, measurements and long coherence times are firmly established, but progress on controlling two qubit interactions has been slower. One reason for this is that the inter donor exchange coupling has been predicted to oscillate with separation, making it hard to estimate in device designs. We present a multivalley effective mass theory of a donor pair in silicon, including both a central cell potential and the effective mass anisotropy intrinsic in the Si conduction band. We are able to accurately describe the single donor properties of valley-orbit coupling and the spatial extent of donor wave functions, highlighting the importance of fitting measured values of hyperfine coupling and the orbital energy of the $1s$ levels. Ours is a simple framework that can be applied flexibly to a range of experimental scenarios, but it is nonetheless able to provide fast and reliable predictions. We use it to estimate the exchange coupling between two donor electrons and we find a smoothing of its expected oscillations, and predict a monotonic dependence on separation if two donors are spaced precisely along the [100] direction.
Considering Rashba quantum wires with a proximity-induced superconducting gap as physical realizations of Majorana fermions and quantum dots, we calculate the overlap of the Majorana wave functions with the local wave functions on the dot. We determine the spin-dependent tunneling amplitudes between these two localized states and show that we can tune into a fully spin polarized tunneling regime by changing the distance between dot and Majorana fermion. Upon directly applying this to the tunneling model Hamiltonian, we calculate the effective magnetic field on the quantum dot flanked by two Majorana fermions. The direction of the induced magnetic field on the dot depends on the occupation of the nonlocal fermion formed from the two Majorana end states which can be used as a readout for such a Majorana qubit.
We test the valley-filtering capabilities of a quantum dot inscribed by locally straining an $alpha$-$mathcal{T}_3$ lattice. Specifically, we consider an out-of-plane Gaussian bump in the center of a four-terminal configuration and calculate the generated pseudomagnetic field having an opposite direction for electrons originating from different valleys, the resulting valley-polarized currents, and the conductance between the injector and collector situated opposite one another. Depending on the quantum dots width and width-to-height ratio, we detect different transport regimes with and without valley filtering for both the $alpha$-$mathcal{T}_3$ and dice lattice structures. In addition, we analyze the essence of the conductance resonances with a high valley polarization in terms of related (pseudo-) Landau levels, the spatial distribution of the local density of states, and the local current densities. The observed local charge and current density patterns reflect the local inversion symmetry breaking by the strain, besides the global inversion symmetry breaking due to the scaling parameter $alpha$. By this way we can also filter out different sublattices.