Universal control of superexchange in linear triple quantum dots with an empty mediator

Abstract

Superexchange is one of the vital resources to realize long-range interaction between distant spins for large-scale quantum computing. Recent experiments have demonstrated coherent oscillations between logical states defined by remote spins whose coupling is given by the superexchange interaction mediated by central spins. Excavating the potential of superexchange requires a full understanding of the interaction in terms of control parameters, which is still lacking in literature. Here, using full configuration interaction calculations, we study a two-electron system in a linear triple-quantum-dot device in which the left and right dots are occupied by a single electron each, whose spin states are defined as qubits. The numerical nature of the full configuration interaction calculations allows access to the microscopic details of the quantum-dot confining potential and electronic wavefunctions, some of which are overlooked in the celebrated Hubbard model but turn out to be critical for the behavior of superexchange. We focus on the detuning regime where the charge ground state yields an empty middle dot. We have found that, when the detunings at the left and right dots are leveled, the superexchange can exhibit a non-monotonic behavior which ranges from positive to negative values as a function of the middle-dot detuning. We further show that a larger relative detuning between the left and right dots causes the magnitude of the superexchange to increase (decrease) for an originally positive (negative) superexchange. We then proceed to show the results for a much larger left-right dot detuning. Our results suggest that even a simple configuration of delocalized two-electron states in a linear triple-quantum-dot device exhibits superexchange energy with non-trivial behaviors, which could have important applications in spin-based quantum computing.