No Arabic abstract
Dopant atoms are ubiquitous in semiconductor technologies, providing the tailored electronic properties that underpin the modern digital information era. Harnessing the quantum nature of these atomic-scale objects represents a new and exciting technological revolution. In this article we describe the use of ion-implanted donor spins in silicon for quantum technologies. We review how to fabricate and operate single-atom spin qubits in silicon, obtaining some of the most coherent solid-state qubits, and we discuss pathways to scale up these qubits to build large quantum processors. Heavier group-V donors with large nuclear spins display electric quadrupole couplings that enable nuclear electric resonance, quantum chaos and strain sensing. Donor ensembles can be coupled to microwave cavities to develop hybrid quantum Turing machines. Counted, deterministic implantation of single donors, combined with novel methods for precision placement, will allow the integration of individual donors spins with industry-standard silicon fabrication processes, making implanted donors a prime physical platform for the second quantum revolution.
We experimentally study the coupling of Group V donor spins in silicon to mechanical strain, and measure strain-induced frequency shifts which are linear in strain, in contrast to the quadratic dependence predicted by the valley repopulation model (VRM), and therefore orders of magnitude greater than that predicted by the VRM for small strains $|varepsilon| < 10^{-5}$. Through both tight-binding and first principles calculations we find that these shifts arise from a linear tuning of the donor hyperfine interaction term by the hydrostatic component of strain and achieve semi-quantitative agreement with the experimental values. Our results provide a framework for making quantitative predictions of donor spins in silicon nanostructures, such as those being used to develop silicon-based quantum processors and memories. The strong spin-strain coupling we measure (up to 150~GHz per strain, for Bi-donors in Si), offers a method for donor spin tuning --- shifting Bi donor electron spins by over a linewidth with a hydrostatic strain of order $10^{-6}$ --- as well as opportunities for coupling to mechanical resonators.
Electron spins are amongst the most coherent solid-state systems known, however, to be used in devices for quantum sensing and information processing applications, they must be typically placed near interfaces. Understanding and mitigating the impacts of such interfaces on the coherence and spectral properties of electron spins is critical to realize such applications, but is also challenging: inferring such data from single-spin studies requires many measurements to obtain meaningful results, while ensemble measurements typically give averaged results that hide critical information. Here, we report a comprehensive study of the coherence of near-surface bismuth donor spins in 28-silicon at millikelvin temperatures. In particular, we use strain-induced frequency shifts caused by a metallic electrode to make spatial maps of spin coherence as a function of depth and position relative to the electrode. By measuring magnetic-field-insensitive clock transitions we separate magnetic noise caused by surface spins from charge noise. Our results include quantitative models of the strain-split spin resonance spectra and extraction of paramagnetic impurity concentrations at the silicon surface. The interplay of these decoherence mechanisms for such near-surface electron spins is critical for their application in quantum technologies, while the combination of the strain splitting and clock transition extends the coherence lifetimes by up to two orders of magnitude, reaching up to 300 ms at a mean depth of only 100nm. The technique we introduce here to spatially map coherence in near-surface ensembles is directly applicable to other spin systems of active interest, such as defects in diamond, silicon carbide, and rare earth ions in optical crystals.
The Stark shift of the hyperfine coupling constant is investigated for a P donor in Si far below the ionization regime in the presence of interfaces using Tight-binding and Band Minima Basis approaches and compared to the recent precision measurements. The TB electronic structure calculations included over 3 million atoms. In contrast to previous effective mass based results, the quadratic Stark coefficient obtained from both theories agrees closely with the experiments. This work represents the most sensitive and precise comparison between theory and experiment for single donor spin control. It is also shown that there is a significant linear Stark effect for an impurity near the interface, whereas, far from the interface, the quadratic Stark effect dominates. Such precise control of single donor spin states is required particularly in quantum computing applications of single donor electronics, which forms the driving motivation of this work.
We study single- and multi-quantum transitions of the nuclear spins of ionized arsenic donors in silicon and find quadrupolar effects on the coherence times, which we link to fluctuating electrical field gradients present after the application of light and bias voltage pulses. To determine the coherence times of superpositions of all orders in the 4-dimensional Hilbert space, we use a phase-cycling technique and find that, when electrical effects were allowed to decay, these times scale as expected for a field-like decoherence mechanism such as the interaction with surrounding $^{29}$Si nuclear spins.
Electron spins in silicon quantum dots provide a promising route towards realising the large number of coupled qubits required for a useful quantum processor. At present, the requisite single-shot spin qubit measurements are performed using on-chip charge sensors, capacitively coupled to the quantum dots. However, as the number of qubits is increased, this approach becomes impractical due to the footprint and complexity of the charge sensors, combined with the required proximity to the quantum dots. Alternatively, the spin state can be measured directly by detecting the complex impedance of spin-dependent electron tunnelling between quantum dots. This can be achieved using radio-frequency reflectometry on a single gate electrode defining the quantum dot itself, significantly reducing gate count and architectural complexity, but thus far it has not been possible to achieve single-shot spin readout using this technique. Here, we detect single electron tunnelling in a double quantum dot and demonstrate that gate-based sensing can be used to read out the electron spin state in a single shot, with an average readout fidelity of 73%. The result demonstrates a key step towards the readout of many spin qubits in parallel, using a compact gate design that will be needed for a large-scale semiconductor quantum processor.