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High-fidelity readout and control of a nuclear spin qubit in silicon

Nature volume 496, pages 334–338 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Detection of nuclear spin precession is critical for a wide range of scientific techniques that have applications in diverse fields including analytical chemistry, materials science, medicine and biology. Fundamentally, it is possible because of the extreme isolation of nuclear spins from their environment. This isolation also makes single nuclear spins desirable for quantum-information processing, as shown by pioneering studies on nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamond1,2,3,4. The nuclear spin of a 31P donor in silicon is very promising as a quantum bit5: bulk measurements indicate that it has excellent coherence times6,7 and silicon is the dominant material in the microelectronics industry. Here we demonstrate electrical detection and coherent manipulation of a single 31P nuclear spin qubit with sufficiently high fidelities for fault-tolerant quantum computing8. By integrating single-shot readout of the electron spin9 with on-chip electron spin resonance10, we demonstrate quantum non-demolition11 and electrical single-shot readout of the nuclear spin with a readout fidelity higher than 99.8 per cent—the highest so far reported for any solid-state qubit. The single nuclear spin is then operated as a qubit by applying coherent radio-frequency pulses. For an ionized 31P donor, we find a nuclear spin coherence time of 60 milliseconds and a one-qubit gate control fidelity exceeding 98 per cent. These results demonstrate that the dominant technology of modern electronics can be adapted to host a complete electrical measurement and control platform for nuclear-spin-based quantum-information processing.

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Figure 1: Qubit nanostructure, spin transitions and electron spin resonance spectra.
Figure 2: Nuclear spin quantum jumps, readout error and lifetimes.
Figure 3: NMR spectra and Rabi oscillations of a single 31P nuclear spin.
Figure 4: Ramsey fringes and spin-echo decay.

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Acknowledgements

We thank R. P. Starrett, D. Barber, C. Y. Yang and R. Szymanski for technical assistance and A. Laucht, R. Kalra and J. Muhonen for discussions. This research was funded by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (project number CE11E0096) and the US Army Research Office (W911NF-13-1-0024). We acknowledge support from the Australian National Fabrication Facility.

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Author notes

  1. Kuan Y. Tan, Wee H. Lim & Floris A. Zwanenburg

    Present address: Present addresses: QCD Labs, COMP Centre of Excellence, Department of Applied Physics, Aalto University, PO Box 13500, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland (K.Y.T.); Asia Pacific University of Technology and Innovation, Technology Park Malaysia, Bukit Jalil, 57000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (W.H.L.); NanoElectronics Group, MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Twente, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands (F.A.Z.).,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology, School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052, New South Wales, Australia

    Jarryd J. Pla, Kuan Y. Tan, Juan P. Dehollain, Wee H. Lim, Floris A. Zwanenburg, Andrew S. Dzurak & Andrea Morello

  2. London Centre for Nanotechnology, University College London, London, WC1H 0AH, UK

    John J. L. Morton

  3. Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology, School of Physics, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 3010, Victoria, Australia

    David N. Jamieson

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Contributions

K.Y.T. and W.H.L. fabricated the device; D.N.J. designed the P implantation experiments; J.J.P., K.Y.T., J.J.L.M., J.P.D. and F.A.Z. performed the measurements; J.J.P., A.M., A.S.D. and J.J.L.M. designed the experiments and discussed the results; J.J.P. and A.M. analysed the data; and J.J.P. and A.M. wrote the manuscript with input from all co-authors.

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Correspondence to Andrea Morello.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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This file contains supplementary Text and Data 1-8, Supplementary Figures 1-4 and additional references. (PDF 656 kb)

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Pla, J., Tan, K., Dehollain, J. et al. High-fidelity readout and control of a nuclear spin qubit in silicon. Nature 496, 334–338 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12011

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