Silicon is vital to the computing industry because of the high quality of its native oxide and well-established doping technologies. Isotopic purification has enabled quantum coherence times on the ...order of seconds, thereby placing silicon at the forefront of efforts to create a solid-state quantum processor. We demonstrate strong coupling of a single electron in a silicon double quantum dot to the photonic field of a microwave cavity, as shown by the observation of vacuum Rabi splitting. Strong coupling of a quantum dot electron to a cavity photon would allow for long-range qubit coupling and the long-range entanglement of electrons in semiconductor quantum dots.
Nonlocal qubit interactions are a hallmark of advanced quantum information technologies
. The ability to transfer quantum states and generate entanglement over distances much larger than qubit length ...scales greatly increases connectivity and is an important step towards maximal parallelism and the implementation of two-qubit gates on arbitrary pairs of qubits
. Qubit-coupling schemes based on cavity quantum electrodynamics
also offer the possibility of using high-quality-factor resonators as quantum memories
. Extending qubit interactions beyond the nearest neighbour is particularly beneficial for spin-based quantum computing architectures, which are limited by short-range exchange interactions
. Despite the rapidly maturing device technology for silicon spin qubits
, experimental progress towards achieving long-range spin-spin coupling has so far been restricted to interactions between individual spins and microwave photons
. Here we demonstrate resonant microwave-mediated coupling between two electron spins that are physically separated by more than four millimetres. An enhanced vacuum Rabi splitting is observed when both spins are tuned into resonance with the cavity, indicating a coherent interaction between the two spins and a cavity photon. Our results imply that microwave-frequency photons may be used to generate long-range two-qubit gates between spatially separated spins.
We study an accumulation mode Si/SiGe double quantum dot (DQD) containing a single electron that is dipole coupled to microwave photons in a superconducting cavity. Measurements of the cavity ...transmission reveal dispersive features due to the DQD valley states in Si. The occupation of the valley states can be increased by raising the temperature or applying a finite source-drain bias across the DQD, resulting in an increased signal. Using the cavity input-output theory and a four-level model of the DQD, it is possible to efficiently extract valley splittings and the inter- and intravalley tunnel couplings.
Electron spins in silicon quantum dots are attractive systems for quantum computing owing to their long coherence times and the promise of rapid scaling of the number of dots in a system using ...semiconductor fabrication techniques. Although nearest-neighbour exchange coupling of two spins has been demonstrated, the interaction of spins via microwave-frequency photons could enable long-distance spin-spin coupling and connections between arbitrary pairs of qubits ('all-to-all' connectivity) in a spin-based quantum processor. Realizing coherent spin-photon coupling is challenging because of the small magnetic-dipole moment of a single spin, which limits magnetic-dipole coupling rates to less than 1 kilohertz. Here we demonstrate strong coupling between a single spin in silicon and a single microwave-frequency photon, with spin-photon coupling rates of more than 10 megahertz. The mechanism that enables the coherent spin-photon interactions is based on spin-charge hybridization in the presence of a magnetic-field gradient. In addition to spin-photon coupling, we demonstrate coherent control and dispersive readout of a single spin. These results open up a direct path to entangling single spins using microwave-frequency photons.
Electrons confined in Si quantum dots possess orbital, spin, and valley degrees of freedom (DOF). We perform Landau-Zener-Stückelberg-Majorana (LZSM) interferometry on a Si double quantum dot that is ...strongly coupled to a microwave cavity to probe the valley DOF. The resulting LZSM interference pattern is asymmetric as a function of level detuning and persists for drive periods that are much longer than typical charge decoherence times. By correlating the LZSM interference pattern with charge-noise measurements, we show that valley-orbit hybridization provides some protection from the deleterious effects of charge noise. Our work opens the possibility of harnessing the valley DOF to engineer charge-noise-insensitive qubits in Si.
Inherent symmetry of a quantum system may protect its otherwise fragile states. Leveraging such protection requires testing its robustness against uncontrolled environmental interactions. Using 47 ...superconducting qubits, we implement the one-dimensional kicked Ising model, which exhibits nonlocal Majorana edge modes (MEMs) with
ℤ
2
parity symmetry. We find that any multiqubit Pauli operator overlapping with the MEMs exhibits a uniform late-time decay rate comparable to single-qubit relaxation rates, irrespective of its size or composition. This characteristic allows us to accurately reconstruct the exponentially localized spatial profiles of the MEMs. Furthermore, the MEMs are found to be resilient against certain symmetry-breaking noise owing to a prethermalization mechanism. Our work elucidates the complex interplay between noise and symmetry-protected edge modes in a solid-state environment.
Tough edges
The dynamics of quantum many-body systems can be profoundly affected by their interaction with the environment. This includes systems that have topological protection from certain kinds of perturbations due to symmetry. Mi
et al
. studied the interplay between symmetry and noise using a chain of 47 superconducting qubits. They implemented a periodically driven transverse Ising spin model, and found that the system’s edge modes were surprisingly resilient to some types of symmetry-breaking noise. —JS
A 47-qubit chain was used to study the interplay of noise and symmetry in an open quantum system.
We demonstrate diabatic two-qubit gates with Pauli error rates down to 4.3(2)×10^{-3} in as fast as 18 ns using frequency-tunable superconducting qubits. This is achieved by synchronizing the ...entangling parameters with minima in the leakage channel. The synchronization shows a landscape in gate parameter space that agrees with model predictions and facilitates robust tune-up. We test both iswap-like and cphase gates with cross-entropy benchmarking. The presented approach can be extended to multibody operations as well.