No Arabic abstract
Quantum shot noise probes the dynamics of charge transfers through a quantum conductor, reflecting whether quasiparticles flow across the conductor in a steady stream, or in syncopated bursts. We have performed high-sensitivity shot noise measurements in a quantum dot obtained in a silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor. The quality of our device allows us to precisely associate the different transport regimes and their statistics with the internal state of the quantum dot. In particular, we report on large current fluctuations in the inelastic cotunneling regime, corresponding to different highly-correlated, non-Markovian charge transfer processes. We have also observed unusually large current fluctuations at low energy in the elastic cotunneling regime, the origin of which remains to be fully investigated.
The interaction between electrons and the vibrational degrees of freedom of a molecular quantum dot can lead to an exponential suppression of the conductance, an effect which is commonly termed Franck-Condon blockade. Here, we investigate this effect in a quantum dot driven by time-periodic gate voltages and tunneling amplitudes using nonequilibrium Greens functions and a Floquet expansion. Building on previous results showing that driving can lift the Franck-Condon blockade, we investigate driving protocols which can be used to pump charge across the quantum dot. In particular, we show that due to the strongly coupled nature of the system, the pump current at resonance is an exponential function of the drive strength.
The transport properties of junctions composed of a central region tunnel-coupled to external electrodes are frequently studied within the single-impurity Anderson model with Hubbard on-site interaction. In the present work, we supplement the model with an important ingredient, namely the charge-bond interaction, also known as correlated or assisted hopping. Correlated hopping enters the second-quantised Hamiltonian, written in the Wannier representation, as an off-diagonal many-body term. Using the equation of motion technique, we study the effect of the correlated hopping on the spectral and transport characteristics of a two-terminal quantum dot. Two different Green functions (GFs) appear: one of them describes the spectral properties of the quantum dot, the other the transport properties of the system. The calculation of the transport GF requires the knowledge of the spectral one. We use decoupling procedures similar to those which properly describe the standard Anderson model within the Kondo regime and outside of it. For an arbitrary ratio $x$ between the amplitudes of correlated and single-particle hopping terms, the transport GF fulfils the $x leftrightarrow 2-x$ symmetry of the model. The average occupation of the dot also obeys this symmetry, albeit the spectral function of the quantum dot, calculated within an analogous decoupling scheme as for the transport GF, does not. We identify the physical reason for this behavior, and propose a way to cure it. Since the correlated-hopping term breaks the particle-hole symmetry of the model and modifies all transport characteristics of the system, the detailed knowledge of its influence on measurable characteristics is a prerequisite for its experimental detection. Simple, experimentally feasible methods are proposed.
Spin qubits in silicon quantum dots offer a promising platform for a quantum computer as they have a long coherence time and scalability. The charge sensing technique plays an essential role in reading out the spin qubit as well as tuning the device parameters and therefore its performance in terms of measurement bandwidth and sensitivity is an important factor in spin qubit experiments. Here we demonstrate fast and sensitive charge sensing by a radio-frequency reflectometry of an undoped, accumulation-mode Si/SiGe double quantum dot. We show that the large parasitic capacitance in typical accumulation-mode gate geometries impedes reflectometry measurements. We present a gate geometry that significantly reduces the parasitic capacitance and enables fast single-shot readout. The technique allows us to distinguish between the singly- and doubly-occupied two-electron states under the Pauli spin blockade condition in an integration time of 0.8 {mu}s, the shortest value ever reported in silicon, by the signal-to-noise ratio of 6. These results provide a guideline for designing silicon spin qubit devices suitable for the fast and high-fidelity readout.
In this Report we show the role of charge defects in the context of the formation of electrostatically defined quantum dots. We introduce a barrier array structure to probe defects at multiple locations in a single device. We measure samples both before and after an annealing process which uses an Al$_2$O$_3$ overlayer, grown by atomic layer deposition. After passivation of the majority of charge defects with annealing we can electrostatically define hole quantum dots up to 180 nm in length. Our ambipolar structures reveal amphoteric charge defects that remain after annealing with charging energies of ~10 meV in both the positive and negative charge state.
Quantum tunneling dominates coherent transport at low temperatures in many systems of great interest. In this work we report a many--body tunneling (MBT), by nonperturbatively solving the Anderson multi-impurity model, and identify it a fundamental tunneling process on top of the well--acknowledged sequential tunneling and cotunneling. We show that the MBT involves the dynamics of doublons in strongly correlated systems. Proportional to the numbers of dynamical doublons, the MBT can dominate the off--resonant transport in the strongly correlated regime. A $T^{3/2}$--dependence of the MBT current on temperature is uncovered and can be identified as a fingerprint of the MBT in experiments. We also prove that the MBT can support the coherent long--range tunneling of doublons, which is well consistent with recent experiments on ultracold atoms. As a fundamental physical process, the MBT is expected to play important roles in general quantum systems.