Reducing the hydrogen content in liquid helium

Helium has the lowest boiling point of any element in nature at normal atmospheric pressure. Therefore, any unwanted substance like impurities present in liquid helium will be frozen and will be in solid form. Even if these solid impurities can be easily eliminated by filtering, liquid helium may contain a non negligible quantity of molecular hydrogen. These traces of molecular hydrogen are the causes of a known problem worldwide: the blocking of fine capillary tubes used as flow resistors in helium evaporation cryostats to achieve temperatures below 4.2 K. This problem seriously affects a wide range of cryogenic equipment used in low temperature physics research and leads to a dramatic loss of time and costs due to the high price of helium. Here, we present first the measurement of molecular hydrogen content in helium gas. Three measures to decrease this molecular hydrogen are afterward proposed; (i)improving the helium quality, (ii) release of helium gas in the atmosphere during purge time for the regeneration cycle of the helium liquefierâEurotms internal purifier, and (iii) installation of two catalytic converters in a closed helium circuit. These actions have eliminated all blockages of capillaries at low temperatures now for more than two years

Magnetic cooling for microkelvin nanoelectronics on a cryofree platform

We present a parallel network of 16 demagnetization refrigerators mounted on a cryofree dilution refrigerator aimed to cool nanoelectronic devices to sub-millikelvin temperatures. To measure the refrigerator temperature, the thermal motion of electrons in a Ag wire -- thermalized by a spot-weld to one of the Cu nuclear refrigerators -- is inductively picked-up by a superconducting gradiometer and amplified by a SQUID mounted at 4 K. The noise thermometer as well as other thermometers are used to characterize the performance of the system, finding magnetic field independent heat-leaks of a few nW/mol, cold times of several days below 1 mK, and a lowest temperature of 150 microK of one of the nuclear stages in a final field of 80 mT, close to the intrinsic SQUID noise of about 100 microK. A simple thermal model of the system capturing the nuclear refrigerator, heat leaks, as well as thermal and Korringa links describes the main features very well, including rather high refrigerator efficiencies typically above 80%.Comment: 4 color figures, including supplementary inf

Stretchable persistent spin helices in GaAs quantum wells

The Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit (SO) interactions in 2D electron gases act as effective magnetic fields with momentum-dependent directions, which cause spin decay as the spins undergo arbitrary precessions about these randomly-oriented SO fields due to momentum scattering. Theoretically and experimentally, it has been established that by fine-tuning the Rashba $\alpha$ and Dresselhaus $\beta$ couplings to equal $\it{fixed}$ strengths $\alpha=\beta$, the total SO field becomes unidirectional thus rendering the electron spins immune to dephasing due to momentum scattering. A robust persistent spin helix (PSH) has already been experimentally realized at this singular point $\alpha=\beta$. Here we employ the suppression of weak antilocalization as a sensitive detector for matched SO fields together with a technique that allows for independent electrical control over the SO couplings via top gate voltage $V_T$ and back gate voltage $V_B$. We demonstrate for the first time the gate control of $\beta$ and the $\it{continuous\,locking}$ of the SO fields at $\alpha=\beta$, i.e., we are able to vary both $\alpha$ and $\beta$ controllably and continuously with $V_T$ and $V_B$, while keeping them locked at equal strengths. This makes possible a new concept: "stretchable PSHs", i.e., helical spin patterns with continuously variable pitches $P$ over a wide parameter range. The extracted spin-diffusion lengths and decay times as a function of $\alpha/\beta$ show a significant enhancement near $\alpha/\beta=1$. Since within the continuous-locking regime quantum transport is diffusive (2D) for charge while ballistic (1D) for spin and thus amenable to coherent spin control, stretchable PSHs could provide the platform for the much heralded long-distance communication $\sim 8 - 25$ $\mu$m between solid-state spin qubits.Comment: 5 color figures, with supplementary info available on arXiv. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1403.351

Anisotropic Etching of Graphite and Graphene in a Remote Hydrogen Plasma

We investigate the etching of a pure hydrogen plasma on graphite samples and graphene flakes on SiO$_2$ and hexagonal Boron-Nitride (hBN) substrates. The pressure and distance dependence of the graphite exposure experiments reveals the existence of two distinct plasma regimes: the direct and the remote plasma regime. Graphite surfaces exposed directly to the hydrogen plasma exhibit numerous etch pits of various size and depth, indicating continuous defect creation throughout the etching process. In contrast, anisotropic etching forming regular and symmetric hexagons starting only from preexisting defects and edges is seen in the remote plasma regime, where the sample is located downstream, outside of the glowing plasma. This regime is possible in a narrow window of parameters where essentially all ions have already recombined, yet a flux of H-radicals performing anisotropic etching is still present. At the required process pressures, the radicals can recombine only on surfaces, not in the gas itself. Thus, the tube material needs to exhibit a sufficiently low H radical recombination coefficient, such a found for quartz or pyrex. In the remote regime, we investigate the etching of single layer and bilayer graphene on SiO$_2$ and hBN substrates. We find isotropic etching for single layer graphene on SiO$_2$, whereas we observe highly anisotropic etching for graphene on a hBN substrate. For bilayer graphene, anisotropic etching is observed on both substrates. Finally, we demonstrate the use of artificial defects to create well defined graphene nanostructures with clean crystallographic edges.Comment: 7 pages, 4 color figure

A spin qubit in a fin field-effect transistor

Quantum computing's greatest challenge is scaling up. Several decades ago, classical computers faced the same problem and a single solution emerged: very-large-scale integration using silicon. Today's silicon chips consist of billions of field-effect transistors (FinFETs) in which current flow along the fin-shaped channel is controlled by wrap-around gates. The semiconductor industry currently employs fins of sub-10$\,$nm width, small enough for quantum applications: at low temperature, an electron or hole can be trapped under the gate and serve as a spin qubit. An attractive benefit of silicon's advantageous scaling properties is that quantum hardware and its classical control circuitry can be integrated in the same package. This, however, requires qubit operation at temperatures greater than 1$\,$K where the cooling is sufficient to overcome the heat dissipation. Here, we demonstrate that a silicon FinFET is an excellent host for spin qubits that operate even above 4$\,$K. We achieve fast electrical control of hole spins with driving frequencies up to 150$\,$MHz and single-qubit gate fidelities at the fault-tolerance threshold. The number of spin rotations before coherence is lost at these "hot" temperatures already matches or exceeds values on hole spin qubits at mK temperatures. While our devices feature both industry compatibility and quality, they are fabricated in a flexible and agile way to accelerate their development. This work paves the way towards large-scale integration of all-electrical and ultrafast spin qubits

G-factor of electrons in gate-defined quantum dots in a strong in-plane magnetic field

We analyze orbital effects of an in-plane magnetic field on the spin structure of states of a gated quantum dot based in a two-dimensional electron gas. Starting with a $k \cdot p$ Hamiltonian, we perturbatively calculate these effects for the conduction band of GaAs, up to the third power of the magnetic field. We quantify several corrections to the g-tensor and reveal their relative importance. We find that for typical parameters, the Rashba spin-orbit term and the isotropic term, $H_{43} \propto {\bf P}^2 {\bf B} \cdot \boldsymbol{\sigma}$, give the largest contributions in magnitude. The in-plane anisotropy of the g-factor is, on the other hand, dominated by the Dresselhaus spin-orbit term. At zero magnetic field, the total correction to the g-factor is typically 5-10% of its bulk value. In strong in-plane magnetic fields, the corrections are modified appreciably.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures; v2 is in content identical to the version published in PRB. Compared to v1, the minor changes adopted in v2 are reflecting the PRB referees' suggestion

Breakdown of the Korringa Law of Nuclear Spin Relaxation in Metallic GaAs

We present nuclear spin relaxation measurements in GaAs epilayers using a new pump-probe technique in all-electrical, lateral spin-valve devices. The measured T1 times agree very well with NMR data available for T > 1 K. However, the nuclear spin relaxation rate clearly deviates from the well-established Korringa law expected in metallic samples and follows a sub-linear temperature dependence 1/T1 ~ T^0.6 for 0.1 K < T < 10 K. Further, we investigate nuclear spin inhomogeneities.Comment: 5 pages, 4 (color) figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1109.633

Spectroscopy of Quantum-Dot Orbitals with In-Plane Magnetic Fields

We show that in-plane-magnetic-field assisted spectroscopy allows extraction of the in-plane orientation and full 3D shape of the quantum mechanical orbitals of a single electron GaAs lateral quantum dot with sub-nm precision. The method is based on measuring orbital energies in a magnetic field with various strengths and orientations in the plane of the 2D electron gas. As a result, we deduce the microscopic quantum dot confinement potential landscape, and quantify the degree by which it differs from a harmonic oscillator potential. The spectroscopy is used to validate shape manipulation with gate voltages, agreeing with expectations from the gate layout. Our measurements demonstrate a versatile tool for quantum dots with one dominant axis of strong confinement.Comment: 4 pages, 3 color figures, including supplementary on arXi