We investigate phonon-induced spin and charge relaxation mediated by spin-orbit and hyperfine interactions for a single electron confined within a double quantum dot. A simple toy model incorporating both direct decay to the ground state of the double dot and indirect decay via an intermediate excited state yields an electron spin relaxation rate that varies non-monotonically with the detuning between the dots. We confirm this model with experiments performed on a GaAs double dot, demonstrating that the relaxation rate exhibits the expected detuning dependence and can be electrically tuned over several orders of magnitude. Our analysis suggests that spin-orbit mediated relaxation via phonons serves as the dominant mechanism through which the double-dot electron spin-flip rate varies with detuning.
While quantum dots are at the forefront of quantum device technology, tuning multi-dot systems requires a lengthy experimental process as multiple parameters need to be accurately controlled. This process becomes increasingly time-consuming and difficult to perform manually as the devices become more complex and the number of tuning parameters grows. In this work, we present a crucial step towards automated tuning of quantum dot qubits. We introduce an algorithm driven by machine learning that uses a small number of coarse-grained measurements as its input and tunes the quantum dot system into a pre-selected charge state. We train and test our algorithm on a GaAs double quantum dot device and we consistently arrive at the desired state or its immediate neighborhood.
We theoretically investigate transport signatures of quantum interference in highly symmetric double quantum dots in a parallel geometry and demonstrate that extremely weak symmetry-breaking effects can have a dramatic influence on the current. Our calculations are based on a master equation where quantum interference enters as non-diagonal elements of the density matrix of the double quantum dots. We also show that many results have a physically intuitive meaning when recasting our equations as Bloch-like equations for a pseudo spin associated with the dot occupation. In the perfectly symmetric configuration with equal tunnel couplings and orbital energies of both dots, there is no unique stationary state density matrix. Interestingly, however, adding arbitrarily small symmetry-breaking terms to the tunnel couplings or orbital energies stabilizes a stationary state either with or without quantum interference, depending on the competition between these two perturbations. The different solutions can correspond to very different current levels. Therefore, if the orbital energies and/or tunnel couplings are controlled by, e.g., electrostatic gating, the double quantum dot can act as an exceptionally sensitive electric switch.
We investigate spin relaxation in a silicon double quantum dot via leakage current through Pauli blockade as a function of interdot detuning and magnetic field. A dip in leakage current as a function of magnetic field on a sim 40 mT field scale is attributed to spin-orbit mediated spin relaxation. On a larger (sim 400 mT) field scale, a peak in leakage current is seen in some, but not all, Pauli-blocked transitions, and is attributed to spin-flip cotunneling. Both dip and peak structure show good agreement between theory and experiment.
We report a detailed study of low-temperature (mK) transport properties of a silicon double-dot system fabricated by phosphorous ion implantation. The device under study consists of two phosphorous nanoscale islands doped to above the metal-insulator transition, separated from each other and the source and drain reservoirs by nominally undoped (intrinsic) silicon tunnel barriers. Metallic control gates, together with an Al-AlOx single-electron transistor, were positioned on the substrate surface, capacitively coupled to the buried dots. The individual double-dot charge states were probed using source-drain bias spectroscopy combined with non-invasive SET charge sensing. The system was measured in linear (VSD = 0) and non-linear (VSD <> 0) regimes allowing calculations of the relevant capacitances. Simultaneous detection using both SET sensing and source-drain current measurements was demonstrated, providing a valuable combination for the analysis of the system. Evolution of the triple points with applied bias was observed using both charge and current sensing. Coulomb diamonds, showing the interplay between the Coulomb charging effects of the two dots, were measured using simultaneous detection and compared with numerical simulations.
A key challenge in scaling quantum computers is the calibration and control of multiple qubits. In solid-state quantum dots, the gate voltages required to stabilize quantized charges are unique for each individual qubit, resulting in a high-dimensional control parameter space that must be tuned automatically. Machine learning techniques are capable of processing high-dimensional data - provided that an appropriate training set is available - and have been successfully used for autotuning in the past. In this paper, we develop extremely small feed-forward neural networks that can be used to detect charge-state transitions in quantum dot stability diagrams. We demonstrate that these neural networks can be trained on synthetic data produced by computer simulations, and robustly transferred to the task of tuning an experimental device into a desired charge state. The neural networks required for this task are sufficiently small as to enable an implementation in existing memristor crossbar arrays in the near future. This opens up the possibility of miniaturizing powerful control elements on low-power hardware, a significant step towards on-chip autotuning in future quantum dot computers.