Large, tunable valley splitting and single-spin relaxation mechanisms in a Si/Si$_x$Ge$_{1-x}$ quantum dot

Abstract

Valley splitting is a key figure of silicon-based spin qubits. Quantum dots in Si/SiGe heterostructures reportedly suffer from a relatively low valley splitting, limiting the operation temperature and the scalability of such qubit devices. Here, we demonstrate a robust and large valley splitting exceeding 200 $μ$eV in a gate-defined single quantum dot, hosted in molecular-beam epitaxy-grown $^{28}$Si/SiGe. The valley splitting is monotonically and reproducibly tunable up to 15 % by gate voltages, originating from a 6 nm lateral displacement of the quantum dot. We observe static spin relaxation times $T_1>1$ s at low magnetic fields in our device containing an integrated nanomagnet. At higher magnetic fields, $T_1$ is limited by the valley hotspot and by phonon noise coupling to intrinsic and artificial spin-orbit coupling, including phonon bottlenecking.