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Ultrafast coherent control and suppressed nuclear feedback of a single quantum dot hole qubit

Nature Physics volume 7, pages 872–878 (2011)Cite this article

Abstract

Future communication and computation technologies that exploit quantum information require robust and well-isolated qubits. Electron spins in III–V semiconductor quantum dots, although promising candidate qubits, see their dynamics limited by undesirable hysteresis and decohering effects of the nuclear spin bath. Replacing electrons with valence-band holes should suppress the hyperfine interaction and consequently eliminate strong nuclear effects. Such suppression was recently observed in optical initialization and coherent population trapping experiments, but complete control over the phase of an arbitrary hole superposition—the essence of a hole-based qubit—has not yet been achieved. Using picosecond optical pulses, we now demonstrate complete coherent control of a single hole qubit and examine both free-induction and spin-echo decay. In moving from electrons to holes, we observe the effects of the reduced hyperfine interactions in the re-emergence of hysteresis-free dynamics, while obtaining similar coherence times limited by non-nuclear mechanisms. These results demonstrate the potential of optically controlled quantum-dot hole qubits.

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Figure 1: Device design and QD structure.
Figure 2: Ultrafast and complete optical coherent control.
Figure 3: Re-emergence of hysteresis-free dynamics for hole spins.
Figure 4: T2* and T2 decoherence.

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Acknowledgements

We thank W. Coish for valuable discussions. This work was supported by NICT, NSF CCR-08 29694, NIST 60NANB9D9170, Special Coordination Funds for Promoting Science and Technology, the State of Bavaria, and by the JSPS through its FIRST Program. P.L.M. acknowledges support as a David Cheriton Stanford Graduate Fellow.

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Author notes

  1. Thaddeus D. Ladd

    Present address: Present address: HRL Laboratories, LLC, 3011 Malibu Canyon Rd., Malibu, California 90265, USA,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. E. L. Ginzton Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA

    Kristiaan De Greve, Peter L. McMahon, David Press, Thaddeus D. Ladd, Sven Höfling & Yoshihisa Yamamoto

  2. National Institute of Informatics, Hitotsubashi 2-1-2, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101-8403, Japan

    Thaddeus D. Ladd & Yoshihisa Yamamoto

  3. Technische Physik and Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen Research Center for Complex Material Systems, University of Würzburg, Am Hubland, D97074 Würzburg, Germany

    Dirk Bisping, Christian Schneider, Martin Kamp, Lukas Worschech, Sven Höfling & Alfred Forchel

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Contributions

D.B., C.S., M.K. and S.H. grew and fabricated the samples. K.D.G., P.L.M. and D.P. performed the optical experiments. T.D.L. provided theoretical analysis and guidance. Y.Y., L.W., S.H. and A.F. guided the work. K.D.G. wrote the manuscript with input from all authors.

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Correspondence to Kristiaan De Greve.

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De Greve, K., McMahon, P., Press, D. et al. Ultrafast coherent control and suppressed nuclear feedback of a single quantum dot hole qubit. Nature Phys 7, 872–878 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2078

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