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Strong coupling between a photon and a hole spin in silicon

Nature Nanotechnology volume 18, pages 741–746 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Spins in semiconductor quantum dots constitute a promising platform for scalable quantum information processing. Coupling them strongly to the photonic modes of superconducting microwave resonators would enable fast non-demolition readout and long-range, on-chip connectivity, well beyond nearest-neighbour quantum interactions. Here we demonstrate strong coupling between a microwave photon in a superconducting resonator and a hole spin in a silicon-based double quantum dot issued from a foundry-compatible metal–oxide–semiconductor fabrication process. By leveraging the strong spin–orbit interaction intrinsically present in the valence band of silicon, we achieve a spin–photon coupling rate as high as 330 MHz, largely exceeding the combined spin–photon decoherence rate. This result, together with the recently demonstrated long coherence of hole spins in silicon, opens a new realistic pathway to the development of circuit quantum electrodynamics with spins in semiconductor quantum dots.

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Fig. 1: Silicon MOS device, superconducting circuitry and DQD charge properties.
Fig. 2: Strong spin–photon coupling.
Fig. 3: Spin–photon coupling versus magnetic-field orientation.
Fig. 4: Spin–photon coupling in the single-dot limit.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during the current study are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7533669.

Code availability

The code used to analyse the datasets are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7533669.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J.-L. Thomassin and F. Gustavo for help in the fabrication of the NbN circuitry and M. Boujard and I. Matei for technical support in the lab. V. Renard is acknowledged for careful proofreading of the manuscript. This research has been supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement nos. 951852 (QLSI project), 810504 (ERC project QuCube) and 759388 (ERC project LONGSPIN), as well as by the French National Research Agency (ANR) through the project MAQSi. S.Z. acknowledges support by an Early Postdoc Mobility fellowship (P2BSP2_184387) from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Cécile X. Yu, Simon Zihlmann.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CEA, Grenoble INP, IRIG-Pheliqs, Grenoble, France

    Cécile X. Yu, Simon Zihlmann, Étienne Dumur, Silvano De Franceschi & Romain Maurand

  2. Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CEA, IRIG-MEM-L_Sim, Grenoble, France

    José C. Abadillo-Uriel, Vincent P. Michal, Michele Filippone & Yann-Michel Niquet

  3. Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CEA, LETI, Grenoble, France

    Nils Rambal, Heimanu Niebojewski, Thomas Bedecarrats, Maud Vinet & Benoit Bertrand

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  1. Cécile X. Yu
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Contributions

C.X.Y. fabricated the NbN circuitry with help from S.Z. C.X.Y. and S.Z. performed the measurements. S.Z. analysed the data with inputs from C.X.Y., J.C.A.-U., É.D. and R.M. J.C.A.-U. developed the theoretical model with help from V.P.M., M.F. and Y.-M.N. S.Z., R.M., J.C.A.-U., S.D.F. and Y.-M.N. co-wrote the manuscript with inputs from all the authors. N.R., H.N, T.B., M.V. and B.B. were responsible for the front-end fabrication of the device. R.M. initiated the project.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Simon Zihlmann or Romain Maurand.

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M.V. is co-founder and CEO of siquance.

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Nature Nanotechnology thanks Malcolm Carroll, Hai-Ou Li and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Sections I–XII, Figs. 1–12 and Table 1.

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Yu, C.X., Zihlmann, S., Abadillo-Uriel, J.C. et al. Strong coupling between a photon and a hole spin in silicon. Nat. Nanotechnol. 18, 741–746 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-023-01332-3

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