Spin susceptibility of two-dimensional electron systems

A quantum computer, in contrast to traditional computers based on transistors, is a device that makes direct use of quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform computation. One of possible realizations is a so-called spin-qubit quantum computer which uses the intrinsic spin degree of freedom of an electron confined to a quantum dot as a qubit (a unit of quantum information that can be in a linear superposition of the basis states). Electron spins in semiconductor quantum dots, e.g., in GaAs, are inevitably coupled via hyperfine interaction to the surrounding environment of nuclear spins. This coupling results in decoherence, which is the process leading to the loss of information stored in a qubit. Spontaneous polarization of nuclear spins should suppress decoherence in single-electron spin qubits and ultimately facilitate quantum computing in these systems. The main focus of this thesis is to study nonanalytic properties of electron spin susceptibility, which was shown to effectively describe the coupling strength between nuclear spins embedded in a two dimensional electron gas (2DEG), and give detailed insights into the issue of spontaneous polarization of nuclear spins. In the first part we consider the effect of rescattering of pairs of quasiparticles in the Cooper channel resulting in the strong renormalization of second-order corrections to the spin susceptibility in a 2DEG. We use the Fourier expansion of the scattering potential in the vicinity of the Fermi surface to find that each harmonic becomes renormalized independently. Since some of those harmonics are negative, the first derivative of the spin susceptibility is bound to be negative at small momenta, in contrast to the lowest order perturbation theory result, which predicts a positive slope. We present in detail an effective method to calculate diagrammatically corrections to the spin susceptibility to infinite order. The second part deals with the effect of the Rashba spin-orbit interaction (SOI) on the nonanalytic behavior of the spin susceptibility for a two-dimensional electron liquid. A long-range interaction via virtual particle-hole pairs between Fermi-liquid quasiparticles leads to the nonanalytic behavior of the spin susceptibility as a function of the temperature, magnetic field, and wavenumber . Although the SOI breaks the SU(2) symmetry, it does not eliminate nonanalyticity but rather makes it anisotropic: while the linear scaling of the out-of-plane spin susceptibility with temperature and the magnetic field saturates at the energy scale set by the SOI, that of the in-plane spin susceptibility continues through this energy scale, until renormalization of the electron-electron interaction in the Cooper channel becomes important. We show that the Renormalization Group flow in the Cooper channel has a non-trivial fixed point, and study the consequences of this fixed point for the nonanalytic behavior of the spin susceptibility. In the third part we analyze the ordered state of nuclear spins embedded in an interacting 2DEG with Rashba SOI. Stability of the ferromagnetic nuclear-spin phase is governed by nonanalytic dependences of the electron spin susceptibility tensor on the momentum and on the SOI coupling constant. The uniform (zero-momentum) spin susceptibility is anisotropic (with the out-of-plane component being larger than the in-plane one by a term proportional to the SOI coupling to second order in electron-electron interaction). For momenta larger than the SOI coupling, corrections to the leading, linear-in-SOI-coupling term scale linearly with momentum for the in-plane component and are absent for the out-of plane component of the spin susceptibility. This anisotropy has important consequences for the ferromagnetic nuclear-spin phase: (i) the ordered state, if achieved, is of an Ising type and (ii) the spin-wave dispersion is gapped at the vanishing momentum. To second order in electron-electron interaction, the dispersion is a decreasing function of the momentum, and the anisotropy is not sufficient to stabilize long-range order. However, we show that renormalization in the Cooper channel for momenta much larger than the SOI coupling is capable of reversing the sign of the momentum-dependence of the in-plane spin susceptibility and thus stabilizing the ordered state, if the system is sufficiently close to (but not necessarily in the immediate vicinity of) the Kohn-Luttinger instability

Quantum Computing with Electron Spins in Quantum Dots

Several topics on the implementation of spin qubits in quantum dots are reviewed. We first provide an introduction to the standard model of quantum computing and the basic criteria for its realization. Other alternative formulations such as measurement-based and adiabatic quantum computing are briefly discussed. We then focus on spin qubits in single and double GaAs electron quantum dots and review recent experimental achievements with respect to initialization, coherent manipulation and readout of the spin states. We extensively discuss the problem of decoherence in this system, with particular emphasis on its theoretical treatment and possible ways to overcome it.Comment: Lecture notes for Course CLXXI "Quantum Coherence in Solid State Systems" Int. School of Physics "Enrico Fermi", Varenna, July 2008, 61 pages, 20 figure

Coulomb Blockade of a Three-terminal Quantum Dot

We study an interacting single-level quantum dot weakly coupled to three electrodes. When two electrodes are biased by voltages with opposite polarities, while keeping the third lead (the stem) grounded, the current through the stem is a measure of electron-hole asymmetry of the dot. In this setup we calculate the stem current for both metallic and ferromagnetic (collinearly polarized) leads and discuss how the three-terminal device gives additional information compared to the usual two-terminal setup. We calculate both the sequential and cotunneling contribution for the currents. For the latter part we include a regularization procedure for the cotunneling current, which enables us to also describe the behavior at the charge degeneracy points.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Momentum dependence of the spin susceptibility in two dimensions: nonanalytic corrections in the Cooper channel

We consider the effect of rescattering of pairs of quasiparticles in the Cooper channel resulting in the strong renormalization of second-order corrections to the spin susceptibility in a two-dimensional electron system. We use the Fourier expansion of the scattering potential in the vicinity of the Fermi surface to find that each harmonic becomes renormalized independently. Since some of those harmonics are negative, the first derivative of the spin susceptibility is bound to be negative at small momenta, in contrast to the lowest order perturbation theory result, which predicts a positive slope. We present in detail an effective method to calculate diagrammatically corrections to the spin susceptibility to infinite order