No Arabic abstract
Coupling carbon nanotube devices to microwave circuits offers a significant increase in bandwidth and signal-to-noise ratio. These facilitate fast non-invasive readouts important for quantum information processing, shot noise and correlation measurements. However, creation of a device that unites a low-disorder nanotube with a low-loss microwave resonator has so far remained a challenge, due to fabrication incompatibility of one with the other. Employing a mechanical transfer method, we successfully couple a nanotube to a gigahertz superconducting matching circuit and thereby retain pristine transport characteristics such as the control over formation of, and coupling strengths between, the quantum dots. Resonance response to changes in conductance and susceptance further enables quantitative parameter extraction. The achieved near matching is a step forward promising high-bandwidth noise correlation measurements on high impedance devices such as quantum dot circuits.
Integrating nano-scale objects, such as single molecules or carbon nanotubes, into impedance transformers and performing radio-frequency measurements allows for high time-resolution transport measurements with improved signal-to-noise ratios. The realization of such transformers implemented with superconducting transmission lines for the 2-10 GHz frequency range is presented here. Controlled electromigration of an integrated gold break junction is used to characterize a 6 GHz impedance matching device. The real part of the RF impedance of the break junction extracted from microwave reflectometry at a maximum bandwidth of 45 MHz of the matching circuit is in good agreement with the measured direct current resistance.
Spins confined in quantum dots are considered as a promising platform for quantum information processing. While many advanced quantum operations have been demonstrated, experimental as well as theoretical efforts are now focusing on the development of scalable spin quantum bit architectures. One particularly promising method relies on the coupling of spin quantum bits to microwave cavity photons. This would enable the coupling of distant spins via the exchange of virtual photons for two qubit gate applications, which still remains to be demonstrated with spin qubits. Here, we use a circuit QED spin-photon interface to drive a single electronic spin in a carbon nanotube based double quantum dot using cavity photons. The microwave spectroscopy allows us to identify an electrically controlled spin transition with a decoherence rate which can be tuned to be as low as $250kHz$. We show that this value is consistent with the expected hyperfine coupling in carbon nanotubes. These coherence properties, which can be attributed to the use of pristine carbon nanotubes stapled inside the cavity, should enable coherent spin-spin interaction via cavity photons and compare favourably to the ones recently demonstrated in Si-based circuit QED experiments.
We consider theoretically ${}^{13}$C-hyperfine interaction induced dephasing in carbon nanotubes double quantum dots with curvature induced spin-orbit coupling. For two electrons initially occupying a single dot, we calculate the average return probability after separation into the two dots, which have random nuclear-spin configurations. We focus on the long time saturation value of the return probability, $P_infty$. Because of the valley degree of freedom, the analysis is more complex than in, for example, GaAs quantum dots, which have two distinct $P_infty$ values depending on the magnetic field. Here the prepared state and the measured state is non-unique because two electrons in the same dot are allowed in six different states. Moreover, for one electron in each dot sixteen states exist and therefore are available for being mixed by the hyperfine field. The return probability experiment is found to be strongly dependent on the prepared state, on the external magnetic field---both Zeeman and orbital effects - and on the spin-orbit splitting. The lowest saturation value, being $P_infty$=1/3, occurs at zero magnetic field for nanotubes with spin-orbit coupling and the initial state being the groundstate, this situation is equivalent to double dots without the valley degree of freedom. In total, we report nine dynamically different situations that give $P_infty$=1/3, 3/8, 2/5, 1/2 and for valley anti-symmetric prepared states in an axial magnetic field, $P_infty$=1. When the groundstate is prepared the ratio between the spin-orbit splitting and the Zeeman energy due to a perpendicular magnetic field can tune the effective hyperfine field continuously from being three dimensional to two dimensional giving saturation values from $P_infty$=1/3 to 3/8.
Quantum dots defined in carbon nanotubes are a platform for both basic scientific studies and research into new device applications. In particular, they have unique properties that make them attractive for studying the coherent properties of single electron spins. To perform such experiments it is necessary to confine a single electron in a quantum dot with highly tunable barriers, but disorder has until now prevented tunable nanotube-based quantum-dot devices from reaching the single-electron regime. Here, we use local gate voltages applied to an ultra-clean suspended nanotube to confine a single electron in both a single quantum dot and, for the first time, in a tunable double quantum dot. This tunability is limited by a novel type of tunnelling that is analogous to that in the Klein paradox of relativistic quantum mechanics.
We present an investigation of different thin-film evaporated ferromagnetic materials for their suitability as electrodes in individual single-wall and multi-wall carbon nanotube-based spin devices. Various electrode shapes made from permalloy (Ni_{81}Fe_{19}), the diluted ferromagnet PdFe, and PdFe/Fe bilayers are studied for both their micromagnetic properties and their contact formation to carbon nanotubes. Suitable devices are tested in low-temperature electron transport measurements, displaying the typical tunneling magnetoresistance of carbon nanotube pseudo spin valves.