L.M.K. Vandersypen
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106 records found
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The simplicity of encoding a qubit in the state of a single electron spin and the potential for their integration into industry-standard microchips continue to drive the field of semiconductor-based quantum computing. After a series of key first-principles demonstrations validating universal gate operations, initialization and readout, three-qubit algorithms have already been realized with silicon-based quantum dots in past years. Devices containing more qubits have become available since then but experiments have not gone beyond meeting the DiVincenzo criteria. In this work, we fully exploit the capacity of a spin-qubit array and implement a six-qubit quantum circuit, the largest utilizing semiconductor quantum technology. By programming the quantum processor, we execute quantum circuits across all permutations of three, four, five, and six neighboring qubits, demonstrating successful programmable multi-qubit operation throughout the array. Using an error model that incorporates quasi-static noise allows us to qualitatively explain some key trends in our experimental results and highlight the necessity to minimize idling times through simultaneous operations, extending dephasing times, and consistently improving state preparation and measurement fidelities.
Quantum simulators enable studies of many-body phenomena, which are intractable with classical hardware. The manipulation of electronic spin states in devices based on semiconductor quantum dots promises precise electrical control and scalability advantages, but accessing many-body phenomena has so far been restricted by challenges in nanofabrication and simultaneous control of multiple interactions. in this study, we performed spectroscopy of up to eight interacting spins using a 2-×-4 array of gate-defined germanium quantum dots. The spectroscopy protocol is based on ramsey interferometry and adiabatic mapping of many-body eigenstates to single-spin eigenstates, enabling complete energy spectrum reconstruction. As the interaction strength exceeds magnetic disorder, we observed signatures of the crossover from localization to a chaotic phase marking a step toward the observation of many-body phenomena in quantum dot systems.
Single-qubit errors can be detected in a system composed of four nuclear spin qubits and one electron spin qubit.
The scalability and power of quantum computing architectures depend critically on high-fidelity operations and robust and flexible qubit connectivity1, 2–3. In this respect, mobile qubits are particularly attractive as they enable dynamic and reconfigurable qubit arrays. This approach allows quantum processors to adapt their connectivity patterns during operation, implement different quantum error correction codes on the same hardware and optimize resource use through dedicated functional zones for specific operations such as measurement or entanglement generation4, 5, 6–7. Such flexibility also relieves architectural constraints, as recently demonstrated in atomic systems based on trapped ions4,5 and neutral atoms manipulated with optical tweezers6,7. In solid-state platforms, highly coherent shuttling of electron spins was recently reported8,9. A key outstanding question is whether it may be possible to perform quantum gates directly on the mobile spins. Here we demonstrate two-qubit operations between two electron spins carried towards each other in separate travelling potential minima in a semiconductor device. We find that the interaction strength is highly tunable by their spatial separation. When we shuttle the two spins towards the centre by 120 nm each for a total displacement of 240 nm, we achieve an average two-qubit gate fidelity of about 99%. Furthermore, we implement conditional post-selected quantum state teleportation between qubits separated by 320 nm with an average gate fidelity of 87%, showcasing the potential of mobile spin qubits for non-local quantum information processing. We expect that operations on mobile qubits will become a universal feature of future large-scale semiconductor quantum processors.
Recent advances in coherent spin shuttling have made sparse semiconductor spin-qubit arrays an appealing solid-state platform to realize quantum processors1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6–7. The dynamic and long-range connectivity enabled by shuttling is also essential for many quantum error-correction schemes8, 9–10. Here we demonstrate a silicon spin-qubit device comprising a shuttling bus for coherently transporting qubits that can interact at four isolated locations that we call bus stops. We dynamically populate the array and tune all single- and two-qubit operations using shuttling and quantum non-demolition spin measurements, without access to charge sensing in most of the device. We achieve universal control of the effective five-qubit processor and select the connectivity required to form a surface-code stabilizer plaquette that supports X- and Z-type parity checks up to weight four. We use the parity checks to generate multi-qubit entanglement between all qubit combinations in the array and report the genuine entanglement of a five-qubit Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger state, constituting one of the largest such states constructed with gate-defined semiconductor spins. The protocols developed here lay the groundwork for modular calibration and operation of sparse spin-qubit arrays, and we highlight the feasibility of near-term quantum error-correction experiments with mobile spin qubits.
Solid-state qubits are sensitive to their microscopic environment, causing the qubit properties to fluctuate on a wide range of timescales. The sub-Hz end of the spectrum is usually dealt with by repeated background calibrations, which bring considerable overhead. It is thus important to characterize and understand the low-frequency variations of the relevant qubit characteristics. In this study, we investigate the stability of spin qubit frequencies in the Si/SiGe quantum dot platform. We find that the calibrated qubit frequencies of a six-qubit device vary by up to ±100 MHz while performing a variety of experiments over a span of 912 days. These variations are sensitive to the precise voltage settings of the gate electrodes, however when these are kept constant to within 15 µV, the qubit frequencies vary by less than ±7 MHz over periods up to 36 days. During overnight scans, the qubit frequencies of ten qubits across two different devices show a standard deviation below 200 kHz within a 1-hour time window. The qubit frequency noise spectral density shows roughly a 1/f trend above 10−4 Hz and, strikingly, a steeper trend at even lower frequencies.
Micromagnet-enabled electric-dipole spin resonance (EDSR) is an established method for high-fidelity single-spin control in silicon, although so far experiments have been restricted to one-dimensional arrays. In contrast, qubit control based on hopping spins has recently emerged as a compelling alternative, with high-fidelity baseband control realized in sparse two-dimensional hole arrays in germanium. In this work, we commission a 28Si/SiGe 2 × 2 quantum dot array both as a four-qubit device using EDSR and as a two-qubit device using baseband hopping control. We establish a lower bound on the fidelity of the hopping gate of 99.50(6)%, which is similar to the average fidelity of the resonant gate. The hopping gate also circumvents the transient pulse-induced resonance shift from heating observed during EDSR operation. To motivate hopping spins as an attractive means of scaling silicon spin-qubit arrays, we propose an extensible nanomagnet design that enables engineered baseband control of large spin arrays.
DC-Readout of Semiconductor Spin Qubits
Opportunities and Limits
The computational power and fault tolerance of future large-scale quantum processors derive in large part from the connectivity between the qubits. One approach to increase connectivity is to engineer qubit–qubit interactions at a distance. Alternatively, the connectivity can be increased by physically displacing the qubits. For semiconductor spin qubits, several studies have investigated spin coherent shuttling of individual electrons, but high-fidelity transport over extended distances remains to be demonstrated. Here we report shuttling of an electron inside an isotopically purified Si/SiGe heterostructure using electric gate potentials. In a first set of experiments, we form static quantum dots and study how spin coherence decays during bucket-brigade shuttling, where we repeatedly move a single electron between up to five dots. Next, for conveyor-mode shuttling, we create a travelling-wave potential, formed with either one or two sets of sine waves, to transport an electron in a moving quantum dot. This method shows a spin coherence an order of magnitude better than the bucket-brigade shuttling. It allows us to displace an electron over an effective distance of 10 μm in under 200 ns while preserving the spin state with a fidelity of 99.5% on average. These results will guide future efforts to realize large-scale semiconductor quantum processors, making use of electron shuttling both within and between qubit arrays.
Semiconductor spin qubits have emerged as a promising platform for quantum computing, following a significant improvement in their control fidelities over recent years. Increasing the qubit count remains challenging, beginning with the fabrication of small features and complex fan-outs. A particular challenge has been formed by the need for individual barrier gates to control the exchange interaction between adjacent spin qubits. Here, we propose a method to vary two-qubit interactions without applying pulses on individual barrier gates while also remaining insensitive to detuning noise in first order. Experimentally we find that changing plunger gate voltages over 300 mV can tune the exchange energy J from 100 kHz to 60 MHz. This allows us to perform two-qubit operations without changing the barrier gate voltage. Based on these findings we conceptualize a spin qubit architecture without individual barrier gates, simplifying the fabrication while maintaining the control necessary for universal quantum computation.
Coupled spins in semiconductor quantum dots are a versatile platform for quantum computing and simulations of complex many-body phenomena. However, on the path of scale-up, crosstalk from densely packed electrodes poses a severe challenge. While crosstalk onto the quantum dot potentials is nowadays routinely compensated for, crosstalk on the exchange interaction is much more difficult to tackle because it is not always directly measurable. Here we propose and implement a way of characterizing and compensating crosstalk on adjacent exchange interactions by following the singlet-triplet avoided crossing in Ge. We show that we can easily identify the barrier-to-barrier crosstalk element without knowledge of the particular exchange value in a 2×4 quantum dot array. We uncover striking differences among these crosstalk elements that can be linked to the geometry of the device and the barrier gate fan-out. We validate the method by tuning up four-spin Heisenberg chains. The same method should be applicable to longer chains of spins and to other semiconductor platforms in which mixing of the singlet and the lowest-energy triplet is present or can be engineered. Additionally, this procedure is well-suited for automated tuning routines as we obtain a standout feature that can be easily tracked and directly returns the magnitude of the crosstalk.
Quantum systems with engineered Hamiltonians can be used to study many-body physics problems to provide insights beyond the capabilities of classical computers. Semiconductor gate-defined quantum dot arrays have emerged as a versatile platform for realizing generalized Fermi-Hubbard physics, one of the richest playgrounds in condensed matter physics. In this work, we employ a germanium 4×2 quantum dot array and show that the naturally occurring long-range Coulomb interaction can lead to exciton formation and transport. We tune the quantum dot ladder into two capacitively coupled channels and exploit Coulomb drag to probe the binding of electrons and holes. Specifically, we shuttle an electron through one leg of the ladder and observe that a hole is dragged along in the second leg under the right conditions. This corresponds to a transition from single-electron transport in one leg to exciton transport along the ladder. Our work paves the way for the study of excitonic states of matter in quantum dot arrays.
The electrical characterisation of classical and quantum devices is a critical step in the development cycle of heterogeneous material stacks for semiconductor spin qubits. In the case of silicon, properties such as disorder and energy separation of conduction band valleys are commonly investigated individually upon modifications in selected parameters of the material stack. However, this reductionist approach fails to consider the interdependence between different structural and electronic properties at the danger of optimising one metric at the expense of the others. Here, we achieve a significant improvement in both disorder and valley splitting by taking a co-design approach to the material stack. We demonstrate isotopically purified, strained quantum wells with high mobility of 3.14(8) × 105 cm2 V−1 s−1 and low percolation density of 6.9(1) × 1010 cm−2. These low disorder quantum wells support quantum dots with low charge noise of 0.9(3) μeV Hz−1/2 and large mean valley splitting energy of 0.24(7) meV, measured in qubit devices. By striking the delicate balance between disorder, charge noise, and valley splitting, these findings provide a benchmark for silicon as a host semiconductor for quantum dot qubits. We foresee the application of these heterostructures in larger, high-performance quantum processors.
Continuous rounds of quantum error correction (QEC) are essential to achieve faulttolerant quantum computers (QCs). In each QEC cycle, thousands of ancilla quantum bits (qubits) must be read out faster than the qubits' decoherence time (<<T2∗~120μs for spin qubits). To address this urgent need, several CMOS receivers operating at cryogenic temperatures (cryo-CMOS RXs) have recently been introduced for gate-based [1] and RF reflectometry [2] readout of spin qubits, as well as transmons' dispersive readout [3]. However, they have a few shortcomings. First, due to the temperatureindependent shot noise of transistors in nanometer CMOS technology [4], their measured noise temperature (TN) is limited to 40K, thus degrading qubit readout fidelity. Second, due to their large TN, prior art showed either only the electrical performance of their chips by applying a relatively large (i.e., -85dBm [2]) modulated signal directly to the RX input [2,3] or offered limited qubit measurements by exploiting a HEMT amplifier prior to the RX [1]. Those issues hinder future monolithic integration between solid-state qubits and readout electronics. This work advances the prior art by (1) introducing a wideband passive amplification circuit at the RX front-end to minimize the shot noise contribution of the active devices, lowering prior art TN by ~2.7x; (2) demonstrating the RX performance in an RF-reflectometry qubit readout scheme without using off-the-shelf LNA prior to the RX.
Direct interactions between quantum particles naturally fall off with distance. However, future quantum computing architectures are likely to require interaction mechanisms between qubits across a range of length scales. In this work, we demonstrate a coherent interaction between two semiconductor spin qubits 250 μm apart using a superconducting resonator. This separation is several orders of magnitude larger than for the commonly used direct interaction mechanisms in this platform. We operate the system in a regime in which the resonator mediates a spin–spin coupling through virtual photons. We report the anti-phase oscillations of the populations of the two spins with controllable frequency. The observations are consistent with iSWAP oscillations of the spin qubits, and suggest that entangling operations are possible in 10 ns. These results hold promise for scalable networks of spin qubit modules on a chip.