26 research outputs found
Micrometre-scale refrigerators
A superconductor with a gap in the density of states or a quantum dot with
discrete energy levels is a central building block in realizing an electronic
on-chip cooler. They can work as energy filters, allowing only hot
quasiparticles to tunnel out from the electrode to be cooled. This principle
has been employed experimentally since the early 1990s in investigations and
demonstrations of micrometre-scale coolers at sub-kelvin temperatures. In this
paper, we review the basic experimental conditions in realizing the coolers and
the main practical issues that are known to limit their performance. We give an
update of experiments performed on cryogenic micrometre-scale coolers in the
past five years
High-fidelity adiabatic inversion of a electron spin qubit in natural silicon
The main limitation to the high-fidelity quantum control of spins in
semiconductors is the presence of strongly fluctuating fields arising from the
nuclear spin bath of the host material. We demonstrate here a substantial
improvement in single-qubit gate fidelities for an electron spin qubit bound to
a P atom in natural silicon, by applying adiabatic inversion instead of
narrow-band pulses. We achieve an inversion fidelity of 97%, and we observe
signatures in the spin resonance spectra and the spin coherence time that are
consistent with the presence of an additional exchange-coupled donor. This work
highlights the effectiveness of adiabatic inversion techniques for spin control
in fluctuating environments.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Bell's inequality violation with spins in silicon
Bell's theorem sets a boundary between the classical and quantum realms, by
providing a strict proof of the existence of entangled quantum states with no
classical counterpart. An experimental violation of Bell's inequality demands
simultaneously high fidelities in the preparation, manipulation and measurement
of multipartite quantum entangled states. For this reason the Bell signal has
been tagged as a single-number benchmark for the performance of quantum
computing devices. Here we demonstrate deterministic, on-demand generation of
two-qubit entangled states of the electron and the nuclear spin of a single
phosphorus atom embedded in a silicon nanoelectronic device. By sequentially
reading the electron and the nucleus, we show that these entangled states
violate the Bell/CHSH inequality with a Bell signal of 2.50(10). An even higher
value of 2.70(9) is obtained by mapping the parity of the two-qubit state onto
the nuclear spin, which allows for high-fidelity quantum non-demolition
measurement (QND) of the parity. Furthermore, we complement the Bell inequality
entanglement witness with full two-qubit state tomography exploiting QND
measurement, which reveals that our prepared states match the target maximally
entangled Bell states with 96\% fidelity. These experiments demonstrate
complete control of the two-qubit Hilbert space of a phosphorus atom, and show
that this system is able to maintain its simultaneously high initialization,
manipulation and measurement fidelities past the single-qubit regime.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, 4 extended data figure
Electrically controlling single spin qubits in a continuous microwave field
Large-scale quantum computers must be built upon quantum bits that are both
highly coherent and locally controllable. We demonstrate the quantum control of
the electron and the nuclear spin of a single 31P atom in silicon, using a
continuous microwave magnetic field together with nanoscale electrostatic
gates. The qubits are tuned into resonance with the microwave field by a local
change in electric field, which induces a Stark shift of the qubit energies.
This method, known as A-gate control, preserves the excellent coherence times
and gate fidelities of isolated spins, and can be extended to arbitrarily many
qubits without requiring multiple microwave sources.Comment: Main paper: 13 pages, 4 figures. Supplementary information: 25 pages,
13 figure
Roadmap on quantum nanotechnologies
Quantum phenomena are typically observable at length and time scales smaller than those of our everyday experience, often involving individual particles or excitations. The past few decades have seen a revolution in the ability to structure matter at the nanoscale, and experiments at the single particle level have become commonplace. This has opened wide new avenues for exploring and harnessing quantum mechanical effects in condensed matter. These quantum phenomena, in turn, have the potential to revolutionize the way we communicate, compute and probe the nanoscale world. Here, we review developments in key areas of quantum research in light of the nanotechnologies that enable them, with a view to what the future holds. Materials and devices with nanoscale features are used for quantum metrology and sensing, as building blocks for quantum computing, and as sources and detectors for quantum communication. They enable explorations of quantum behaviour and unconventional states in nano- and opto-mechanical systems, low-dimensional systems, molecular devices, nano-plasmonics, quantum electrodynamics, scanning tunnelling microscopy, and more. This rapidly expanding intersection of nanotechnology and quantum science/technology is mutually beneficial to both fields, laying claim to some of the most exciting scientific leaps of the last decade, with more on the horizon
Strain effects in phosphorous bound exciton transitions in silicon
Donor spin states in silicon are a promising candidate for quantum
information processing. One possible donor spin readout mechanism is the bound
exciton transition that can be excited optically and creates an electrical
signal when it decays. This transition has been extensively studied in bulk,
but in order to scale towards localized spin readout, microfabricated
structures are needed for detection. As these electrodes will inevitably cause
strain in the silicon lattice, it will be crucial to understand how strain
affects the exciton transitions. Here we study the phosphorous donor bound
exciton transitions in silicon using hybrid electro-optical readout with
microfabricated electrodes. We observe a significant zero-field splitting as
well mixing of the hole states due to strain. We can model these effects
assuming the known asymmetry of the hole g-factors and the Pikus-Bir
Hamiltonian describing the strain. In addition, we describe the laser power,
electric-field and light polarization dependence of the transitions.
Importantly, the hole-mixing should not prevent donor electron spin readout and
using our measured parameters and numerical simulations we anticipate that
hybrid spin readout in a silicon-on-insulator platform should be possible,
allowing integration to silicon photonics platforms.Comment: 7 pages, 9 figure
The effects of ion implantation damage to photonic crystal optomechanical resonators in silicon
Optomechanical resonators were fabricated on a silicon-on-insulator substrate that had been implanted with phosphorus donors. The resonators' mechanical and optical properties were then measured (at 6 K and room temperature) before and after the substrate was annealed. All measured resonators survived the annealing and their mechanical linewidths decreased while their optical and mechanical frequencies increased. This is consistent with crystal lattice damage from the ion implantation causing the optical and mechanical properties to degrade and then subsequently being repaired by the annealing. We explain these effects qualitatively with changes in the silicon crystal lattice structure. We also report on some unexplained features in the pre-anneal samples. In addition, we report partial fabrication of optomechanical resonators with neon ion milling.peerReviewe
State Preparation and Tomography of a Nanomechanical Resonator with Fast Light Pulses
Pulsed optomechanical measurements enable squeezing, nonclassical state creation, and backaction-free sensing. We demonstrate pulsed measurement of a cryogenic nanomechanical resonator with record precision close to the quantum regime. We use these to prepare thermally squeezed and purified conditional mechanical states, and to perform full state tomography. These demonstrations exploit large vacuum optomechanical coupling in a nanophotonic cavity to reach a single-pulse imprecision of 9 times the mechanical zero-point amplitude xzpf. We study the effect of other mechanical modes that limit the conditional state width to 58xzpf, and show how decoherence causes the state to grow in time.peerReviewe