Automatic virtual voltage extraction of a 2x2 array of quantum dots with machine learning

Abstract

Spin qubits in quantum dots are a compelling platform for fault-tolerant quantum computing due to the potential to fabricate dense two-dimensional arrays with nearest neighbour couplings, a requirement to implement the surface code. However, due to the proximity of the surface gate electrodes, cross-coupling capacitances can be substantial, making it difficult to control each quantum dot independently. Increasing the number of quantum dots increases the complexity of the calibration process, which becomes impractical to do heuristically. Inspired by recent demonstrations of industrial-grade silicon quantum dot bilinear arrays, we develop a theoretical framework to mitigate the effect of cross-capacitances in 2x2 arrays of quantum dots and extend it to 2xN and NxN arrays. The method is based on extracting the gradients in gate-voltage space of different charge transitions in multiple two-dimensional charge stability diagrams to determine the system's virtual gates. To automate the process, we train an ensemble of regression models to extract the gradients from a Hough transformation of charge stability diagrams and validate the algorithm on simulated and experimental data of a 2x2 quantum dot array. Our method provides a completely automated tool to mitigate cross-capacitance effects in arrays of QDs which could be utilised to study variability in device electrostatics across large arrays.