Coulomb scattering cross-section in a 2D electron gas and production of entangled electrons

We calculate the Coulomb scattering amplitude for two electrons injected with opposite momenta in an interacting 2DEG. We include the effect of the Fermi liquid background by solving the 2D Bethe-Salpeter equation for the two-particle Green function vertex, in the ladder and random phase approximations. This result is used to discuss the feasibility of producing spin EPR pairs in a 2DEG by collecting electrons emerging from collisions at a pi/2 scattering angle, where only the entangled spin-singlets avoid the destructive interference resulting from quantum indistinguishability. Furthermore, we study the effective 2D electron-electron interaction due to the exchange of virtual acoustic and optical phonons, and compare it to the Coulomb interaction. Finally, we show that the 2D Kohn-Luttinger pairing instability for the scattering electrons is negligible in a GaAs 2DEG.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figure

Spin-based quantum gating with semiconductor quantum dots by bichromatic radiation method

A potential scheme is proposed for realizing a two-qubit quantum gate in semiconductor quantum dots. Information is encoded in the spin degrees of freedom of one excess conduction electron of each quantum dot. We propose to use two lasers, radiation two neighboring QDs, and tuned to blue detuning with respect to the resonant frequencies of individual excitons. The two-qubit phase gate can be achieved by means of both Pauli-blocking effect and dipole-dipole coupling between intermediate excitonic states.Comment: Europhysics Letters 66 (2004) 1

Charge qubit entanglement in double quantum dots

We study entanglement of charge qubits in a vertical tunnel-coupled double quantum dot containing two interacting electrons. Exact diagonalization is used to compute the negativity characterizing entanglement. We find that entanglement can be efficiently generated and controlled by sidegate voltages, and describe how it can be detected. For large enough tunnel coupling, the negativity shows a pronounced maximum at an intermediate interaction strength within the Wigner molecule regime.Comment: revised version of the manuscript, as published in EPL, 7 pages, 4 figure

Multi-Qubit Gates in Arrays Coupled by 'Always On' Interactions

Recently there has been interest in the idea of quantum computing without control of the physical interactions between component qubits. This is highly appealing since the 'switching' of such interactions is a principal difficulty in creating real devices. It has been established that one can employ 'always on' interactions in a one-dimensional Heisenberg chain, provided that one can tune the Zeeman energies of the individual (pseudo-)spins. It is important to generalize this scheme to higher dimensional networks, since a real device would probably be of that kind. Such generalisations have been proposed, but only at the severe cost that the efficiency of qubit storage must *fall*. Here we propose the use of multi-qubit gates within such higher-dimensional arrays, finding a novel three-qubit gate that can in fact increase the efficiency beyond the linear model. Thus we are able to propose higher dimensional networks that can constitute a better embodiment of the 'always on' concept - a substantial step toward bringing this novel concept to full fruition.Comment: 20 pages in preprint format, inc. 3 figures. This version has fixed typos and printer-friendly figures, and is to appear in NJ

Universal quantum computation with ordered spin-chain networks

It is shown that anisotropic spin chains with gapped bulk excitations and magnetically ordered ground states offer a promising platform for quantum computation, which bridges the conventional single-spin-based qubit concept with recently developed topological Majorana-based proposals. We show how to realize the single-qubit Hadamard, phase, and pi/8 gates as well as the two-qubit CNOT gate, which together form a fault-tolerant universal set of quantum gates. The gates are implemented by judiciously controlling Ising exchange and magnetic fields along a network of spin chains, with each individual qubit furnished by a spin-chain segment. A subset of single-qubit operations is geometric in nature, relying on control of anisotropy of spin interactions rather than their strength. We contrast topological aspects of the anisotropic spin-chain networks to those of p-wave superconducting wires discussed in the literature.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

Magnetization transport and quantized spin conductance

We analyze transport of magnetization in insulating systems described by a spin Hamiltonian. The magnetization current through a quasi one-dimensional magnetic wire of finite length suspended between two bulk magnets is determined by the spin conductance which remains finite in the ballistic limit due to contact resistance. For ferromagnetic systems, magnetization transport can be viewed as transmission of magnons and the spin conductance depends on the temperature T. For antiferromagnetic isotropic spin-1/2 chains, the spin conductance is quantized in units of order $(g \mu_B)^2/h$ at T=0. Magnetization currents produce an electric field and hence can be measured directly. For magnetization transport in electric fields phenomena analogous to the Hall effect emerge.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, minor change

Dissipation effects in spin-Hall transport of electrons and holes

We investigate the spin-Hall effect of both electrons and holes in semiconductors using the Kubo formula in the correct zero-frequency limit taking into account the finite momentum relaxation time of carriers in real semiconductors. This approach allows to analyze the range of validity of recent theoretical findings. In particular, the spin-Hall conductivity vanishes for vanishing spin-orbit coupling if the correct zero-frequency limit is performed.Comment: 5 pages, no figures, version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Spin electric effects in molecular antiferromagnets

Molecular nanomagnets show clear signatures of coherent behavior and have a wide variety of effective low-energy spin Hamiltonians suitable for encoding qubits and implementing spin-based quantum information processing. At the nanoscale, the preferred mechanism for control of quantum systems is through application of electric fields, which are strong, can be locally applied, and rapidly switched. In this work, we provide the theoretical tools for the search for single molecule magnets suitable for electric control. By group-theoretical symmetry analysis we find that the spin-electric coupling in triangular molecules is governed by the modification of the exchange interaction, and is possible even in the absence of spin-orbit coupling. In pentagonal molecules the spin-electric coupling can exist only in the presence of spin-orbit interaction. This kind of coupling is allowed for both $s=1/2$ and $s=3/2$ spins at the magnetic centers. Within the Hubbard model, we find a relation between the spin-electric coupling and the properties of the chemical bonds in a molecule, suggesting that the best candidates for strong spin-electric coupling are molecules with nearly degenerate bond orbitals. We also investigate the possible experimental signatures of spin-electric coupling in nuclear magnetic resonance and electron spin resonance spectroscopy, as well as in the thermodynamic measurements of magnetization, electric polarization, and specific heat of the molecules.Comment: 31 pages, 24 figure

Andreev-Tunneling, Coulomb Blockade, and Resonant Transport of Non-Local Spin-Entangled Electrons

We propose and analyze a spin-entangler for electrons based on an s-wave superconductor coupled to two quantum dots each of which is tunnel-coupled to normal Fermi leads. We show that in the presence of a voltage bias and in the Coulomb blockade regime two correlated electrons provided by the Andreev process can coherently tunnel from the superconductor via different dots into different leads. The spin-singlet coming from the Cooper pair remains preserved in this process, and the setup provides a source of mobile and nonlocal spin-entangled electrons. The transport current is calculated and shown to be dominated by a two-particle Breit-Wigner resonance which allows the injection of two spin-entangled electrons into different leads at exactly the same orbital energy, which is a crucial requirement for the detection of spin entanglement via noise measurements. The coherent tunneling of both electrons into the same lead is suppressed by the on-site Coulomb repulsion and/or the superconducting gap, while the tunneling into different leads is suppressed through the initial separation of the tunneling electrons. In the regime of interest the particle-hole excitations of the leads are shown to be negligible. The Aharonov-Bohm oscillations in the current are shown to contain single- and two-electron periods with amplitudes that both vanish with increasing Coulomb repulsion albeit differently fast.Comment: 11 double-column pages, 2 figures, REVTeX, minor revision

Molecular states in carbon nanotube double quantum dots

We report electrical transport measurements through a semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) with three additional top-gates. At low temperatures the system acts as a double quantum dot with large inter-dot tunnel coupling allowing for the observation of tunnel-coupled molecular states extending over the whole double-dot system. We precisely extract the tunnel coupling and identify the molecular states by the sequential-tunneling line shape of the resonances in differential conductance.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure