arXiv subjects

A. Morello

Publications and source records attributed to A. Morello.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2024

Coherent all-optical control of the germanium vacancy in diamond

The germanium vacancy in diamond (GeV) is a promising candidate for color center based quantum networking. Yet, like for other group-IV vacancy defects in diamond, achieving fast, high-fidelity qubit operations using traditional magnetic resonance techniques is experimentally challenging due to a weak magnetic dipole and susceptibility to thermally induced decoherence. Here, we perform all-optical control of the GeV and realize Rabi frequencies exceeding $\sim 20$~MHz. We do so by driving the two $\Lambda$-systems of the GeV simultaneously and apply this to probe the spin coherence ($T_2^*=224\pm14$~ns, $T_2^{\rm H}=11.9\pm0.3$~$\mu$s). Our control scheme is applicable to other color centers and particularly, other group-IV defects for which, the scheme may be optimized to improve all-optical control in these systems.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2023

Hyperfine spectroscopy and fast, all-optical arbitrary state initialization and readout of a single, ten-level ${}^{73}$Ge vacancy nuclear spin qudit in diamond

A high-spin nucleus coupled to a color center can act as a long-lived memory qudit in a spin-photon interface. The germanium vacancy (GeV) in diamond has attracted recent attention due to its excellent spectral properties and provides access to the ten-dimensional Hilbert space of the $I=9/2$ ${}^{73}$Ge nucleus. Here, we observe the ${}^{73}$GeV hyperfine structure, perform nuclear spin readout, and optically initialize the ${}^{73}$Ge spin into any eigenstate on a $\mu$s timescale and with a fidelity of up to $\sim 84\%$. Our results establish the ${}^{73}$GeV as an optically addressable high-spin quantum platform for a high-efficiency spin-photon interface as well as for foundational quantum physics and metrology.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2021

Development of an Undergraduate Quantum Engineering Degree

Quantum technology is exploding. Computing, communication, and sensing are just a few areas likely to see breakthroughs in the next few years. Worldwide, national governments, industries, and universities are moving to create a new class of workforce - the Quantum Engineers. Demand for such engineers is predicted to be in the tens of thousands within a five-year timescale. However, how best to train this next generation of engineers is far from obvious. Quantum mechanics - long a pillar of traditional physics undergraduate degrees - must now be merged with traditional engineering offerings. This paper discusses the history, development, and first year of operation of the world's first undergraduate degree in quantum engineering. The main purpose of the paper is to inform the wider debate, now being held by many institutions worldwide, on how best to formally educate the Quantum Engineer.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2021

An ultra-stable 1.5 tesla permanent magnet assembly for qubit experiments at cryogenic temperatures

Magnetic fields are a standard tool in the toolbox of every physicist, and are required for the characterization of materials, as well as the polarization of spins in nuclear magnetic resonance or electron paramagnetic resonance experiments. Quite often a static magnetic field of sufficiently large, but fixed magnitude is suitable for these tasks. Here we present a permanent magnet assembly that can achieve magnetic field strengths of up to 1.5T over an air gap length of 7mm. The assembly is based on a Halbach array of neodymium (NdFeB) magnets, with the inclusion of the soft magnetic material Supermendur to boost the magnetic field strength inside the air gap. We present the design, simulation and characterization of the permanent magnet assembly, measuring an outstanding magnetic field stability with a drift rate of |D| < 2.8 ppb/h. Our measurements demonstrate that this assembly can be used for spin qubit experiments inside a dilution refrigerator, successfully replacing the more expensive and bulky superconducting solenoids.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2020

Coherent spin qubit transport in silicon

A fault-tolerant quantum processor may be configured using stationary qubits interacting only with their nearest neighbours, but at the cost of significant overheads in physical qubits per logical qubit. Such overheads could be reduced by coherently transporting qubits across the chip, allowing connectivity beyond immediate neighbours. Here we demonstrate high-fidelity coherent transport of an electron spin qubit between quantum dots in isotopically-enriched silicon. We observe qubit precession in the inter-site tunnelling regime and assess the impact of qubit transport using Ramsey interferometry and quantum state tomography techniques. We report a polarization transfer fidelity of 99.97% and an average coherent transfer fidelity of 99.4%. Our results provide key elements for high-fidelity, on-chip quantum information distribution, as long envisaged, reinforcing the scaling prospects of silicon-based spin qubits.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2020

Silicon qubit fidelities approaching incoherent noise limits via pulse engineering

The performance requirements for fault-tolerant quantum computing are very stringent. Qubits must be manipulated, coupled, and measured with error rates well below 1%. For semiconductor implementations, silicon quantum dot spin qubits have demonstrated average single-qubit Clifford gate error rates that approach this threshold, notably with error rates of 0.14% in isotopically enriched $^{28}$Si/SiGe devices. This gate performance, together with high-fidelity two-qubit gates and measurements, is only known to meet the threshold for fault-tolerant quantum computing in some architectures when assuming that the noise is incoherent, and still lower error rates are needed to reduce overhead. Here we experimentally show that pulse engineering techniques, widely used in magnetic resonance, improve average Clifford gate error rates for silicon quantum dot spin qubits to 0.043%,a factor of 3 improvement on previous best results for silicon quantum dot devices. By including tomographically complete measurements in randomised benchmarking, we infer a higher-order feature of the noise called the unitarity, which measures the coherence of noise. This in turn allows us to theoretically predict that average gate error rates as low as 0.026% may be achievable with further pulse improvements. These fidelities are ultimately limited by Markovian noise, which we attribute to charge noise emanating from the silicon device structure itself, or the environment.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2019

Single-spin qubits in isotopically enriched silicon at low magnetic field

Single-electron spin qubits employ magnetic fields on the order of 1 Tesla or above to enable quantum state readout via spin-dependent-tunnelling. This requires demanding microwave engineering for coherent spin resonance control and significant on-chip real estate for electron reservoirs, both of which limit the prospects for large scale multi-qubit systems. Alternatively, singlet-triplet (ST) readout enables high-fidelity spin-state measurements in much lower magnetic fields, without the need for reservoirs. Here, we demonstrate low-field operation of metal-oxide-silicon (MOS) quantum dot qubits by combining coherent single-spin control with high-fidelity, single-shot, Pauli-spin-blockade-based ST readout. We discover that the qubits decohere faster at low magnetic fields with $T_{2}^{Rabi}=18.6$~$μ$s and $T_2^*=1.4$~$μ$s at 150~mT. Their coherence is limited by spin flips of residual $^{29}$Si nuclei in the isotopically enriched $^{28}$Si host material, which occur more frequently at lower fields. Our finding indicates that new trade-offs will be required to ensure the frequency stabilization of spin qubits and highlights the importance of isotopic enrichment of device substrates for the realization of a scalable silicon-based quantum processor.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2019

Silicon quantum processor unit cell operation above one Kelvin

Quantum computers are expected to outperform conventional computers for a range of important problems, from molecular simulation to search algorithms, once they can be scaled up to large numbers of quantum bits (qubits), typically millions. For most solid-state qubit technologies, e.g. those using superconducting circuits or semiconductor spins, scaling poses a significant challenge as every additional qubit increases the heat generated, while the cooling power of dilution refrigerators is severely limited at their operating temperature below 100 mK. Here we demonstrate operation of a scalable silicon quantum processor unit cell, comprising two qubits confined to quantum dots (QDs) at $\sim$1.5 Kelvin. We achieve this by isolating the QDs from the electron reservoir, initialising and reading the qubits solely via tunnelling of electrons between the two QDs. We coherently control the qubits using electrically-driven spin resonance (EDSR) in isotopically enriched silicon $^{28}$Si, attaining single-qubit gate fidelities of 98.6% and coherence time $T_2^*$ = 2$μ$s during `hot' operation, comparable to those of spin qubits in natural silicon at millikelvin temperatures. Furthermore, we show that the unit cell can be operated at magnetic fields as low as 0.1 T, corresponding to a qubit control frequency of 3.5 GHz, where the qubit energy is well below the thermal energy. The unit cell constitutes the core building block of a full-scale silicon quantum computer, and satisfies layout constraints required by error correction architectures. Our work indicates that a spin-based quantum computer could be operated at elevated temperatures in a simple pumped $^4$He system, offering orders of magnitude higher cooling power than dilution refrigerators, potentially enabling classical control electronics to be integrated with the qubit array.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2019

Coherent spin control of s-, p-, d- and f-electrons in a silicon quantum dot

Once the periodic properties of elements were unveiled, chemical bonds could be understood in terms of the valence of atoms. Ideally, this rationale would extend to quantum dots, often termed artificial atoms, and quantum computation could be performed by merely controlling the outer-shell electrons of dot-based qubits. Imperfections in the semiconductor material, including at the atomic scale, disrupt this analogy between atoms and quantum dots, so that real devices seldom display such a systematic many-electron arrangement. We demonstrate here an electrostatically-defined quantum dot that is robust to disorder, revealing a well defined shell structure. We observe four shells (31 electrons) with multiplicities given by spin and valley degrees of freedom. We explore various fillings consisting of a single valence electron -- namely 1, 5, 13 and 25 electrons -- as potential qubits, and we identify fillings that yield a total spin-1 on the dot. An integrated micromagnet allows us to perform electrically-driven spin resonance (EDSR). Higher shell states are shown to be more susceptible to the driving field, leading to faster Rabi rotations of the qubit. We investigate the impact of orbital excitations of the p- and d-shell electrons on single qubits as a function of the dot deformation. This allows us to tune the dot excitation spectrum and exploit it for faster qubit control. Furthermore, hotspots arising from this tunable energy level structure provide a pathway towards fast spin initialisation. The observation of spin-1 states may be exploited in the future to study symmetry-protected topological states in antiferromagnetic spin chains and their application to quantum computing.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2018

Gate-based single-shot readout of spins in silicon

Electron spins in silicon quantum dots provide a promising route towards realising the large number of coupled qubits required for a useful quantum processor. At present, the requisite single-shot spin qubit measurements are performed using on-chip charge sensors, capacitively coupled to the quantum dots. However, as the number of qubits is increased, this approach becomes impractical due to the footprint and complexity of the charge sensors, combined with the required proximity to the quantum dots. Alternatively, the spin state can be measured directly by detecting the complex impedance of spin-dependent electron tunnelling between quantum dots. This can be achieved using radio-frequency reflectometry on a single gate electrode defining the quantum dot itself, significantly reducing gate count and architectural complexity, but thus far it has not been possible to achieve single-shot spin readout using this technique. Here, we detect single electron tunnelling in a double quantum dot and demonstrate that gate-based sensing can be used to read out the electron spin state in a single shot, with an average readout fidelity of 73%. The result demonstrates a key step towards the readout of many spin qubits in parallel, using a compact gate design that will be needed for a large-scale semiconductor quantum processor.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2018

Fidelity benchmarks for two-qubit gates in silicon

Universal quantum computation will require qubit technology based on a scalable platform, together with quantum error correction protocols that place strict limits on the maximum infidelities for one- and two-qubit gate operations. While a variety of qubit systems have shown high fidelities at the one-qubit level, superconductor technologies have been the only solid-state qubits manufactured via standard lithographic techniques which have demonstrated two-qubit fidelities near the fault-tolerant threshold. Silicon-based quantum dot qubits are also amenable to large-scale manufacture and can achieve high single-qubit gate fidelities (exceeding 99.9%) using isotopically enriched silicon. However, while two-qubit gates have been demonstrated in silicon, it has not yet been possible to rigorously assess their fidelities using randomized benchmarking, since this requires sequences of significant numbers of qubit operations ($\gtrsim 20$) to be completed with non-vanishing fidelity. Here, for qubits encoded on the electron spin states of gate-defined quantum dots, we demonstrate Bell state tomography with fidelities ranging from 80% to 89%, and two-qubit randomized benchmarking with an average Clifford gate fidelity of 94.7% and average Controlled-ROT (CROT) fidelity of 98.0%. These fidelities are found to be limited by the relatively slow gate times employed here compared with the decoherence times $T_2^*$ of the qubits. Silicon qubit designs employing fast gate operations based on high Rabi frequencies, together with advanced pulsing techniques, should therefore enable significantly higher fidelities in the near future.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2018

Assessment of a silicon quantum dot spin qubit environment via noise spectroscopy

Preserving coherence long enough to perform meaningful calculations is one of the major challenges on the pathway to large scale quantum computer implementations. Noise coupled from the environment is the main contributing factor to decoherence but can be mitigated via engineering design and control solutions. However, this is only possible after acquiring a thorough understanding of the dominant noise sources and their spectrum. In this paper, we employ a silicon quantum dot spin qubit as a metrological device to study the noise environment experienced by the qubit. We compare the sensitivity of this qubit to electrical noise with that of an implanted phosphorus donor in silicon qubit in the same environment and measurement set-up. Our results show that, as expected, a quantum dot spin qubit is more sensitive to electrical noise than a donor spin qubit due to the larger Stark shift, and the noise spectroscopy data shows pronounced charge noise contributions at intermediate frequencies (2-20 kHz).

quant-ph↗

arXiv2018

Strain-induced spin resonance shifts in silicon devices

In spin-based quantum information processing devices, the presence of control and detection circuitry can change the local environment of a spin by introducing strain and electric fields, altering its resonant frequencies. These resonance shifts can be large compared to intrinsic spin line-widths and it is therefore important to study, understand and model such effects in order to better predict device performance. Here we investigate a sample of bismuth donor spins implanted in a silicon chip, on top of which a superconducting aluminium micro-resonator has been fabricated. The on-chip resonator provides two functions: first, it produces local strain in the silicon due to the larger thermal contraction of the aluminium, and second, it enables sensitive electron spin resonance spectroscopy of donors close to the surface that experience this strain. Through finite-element strain simulations we are able to reconstruct key features of our experiments, including the electron spin resonance spectra. Our results are consistent with a recently discovered mechanism for producing shifts of the hyperfine interaction for donors in silicon, which is linear with the hydrostatic component of an applied strain.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2017

Integrated silicon qubit platform with single-spin addressability, exchange control and robust single-shot singlet-triplet readout

Silicon quantum dot spin qubits provide a promising platform for large-scale quantum computation because of their compatibility with conventional CMOS manufacturing and the long coherence times accessible using $^{28}$Si enriched material. A scalable error-corrected quantum processor, however, will require control of many qubits in parallel, while performing error detection across the constituent qubits. Spin resonance techniques are a convenient path to parallel two-axis control, while Pauli spin blockade can be used to realize local parity measurements for error detection. Despite this, silicon qubit implementations have so far focused on either single-spin resonance control, or control and measurement via voltage-pulse detuning in the two-spin singlet-triplet basis, but not both simultaneously. Here, we demonstrate an integrated device platform incorporating a silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor double quantum dot that is capable of single-spin addressing and control via electron spin resonance, combined with high-fidelity spin readout in the singlet-triplet basis.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

Impact of g-factors and valleys on spin qubits in a silicon double quantum dot

We define single electron spin qubits in a silicon MOS double quantum dot system. By mapping the qubit resonance frequency as a function of gate-induced electric field, the spectrum reveals an anticrossing that is consistent with an inter-valley spin-orbit coupling. We fit the data from which we extract an inter-valley coupling strength of 43 MHz. In addition, we observe a narrow resonance near the primary qubit resonance when we operate the device in the (1,1) charge configuration. The experimental data is consistent with a simulation involving two weakly exchanged-coupled spins with a g-factor difference of 1 MHz, of the same order as the Rabi frequency. We conclude that the narrow resonance is the result of driven transitions between the T- and T+ triplet states, using an ESR signal of frequency located halfway between the resonance frequencies of the two individual spins. The findings presented here offer an alternative method of implementing two-qubit gates, of relevance to the operation of larger scale spin qubit systems.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2017

Coherent control via weak measurements in $^{31}$P single-atom electron and nuclear spin qubits

The understanding of weak measurements and interaction-free measurements has greatly expanded the conceptual and experimental toolbox to explore the quantum world. Here we demonstrate single-shot variable-strength weak measurements of the electron and the nuclear spin states of a single $^{31}$P donor in silicon. We first show how the partial collapse of the nuclear spin due to measurement can be used to coherently rotate the spin to a desired pure state. We explicitly demonstrate that phase coherence is preserved throughout multiple sequential single-shot weak measurements, and that the partial state collapse can be reversed. Second, we use the relation between measurement strength and perturbation of the nuclear state as a physical meter to extract the tunneling rates between the $^{31}$P donor and a nearby electron reservoir from data, conditioned on observing no tunneling events. Our experiments open avenues to measurement-based state preparation, steering and feedback protocols for spin systems in the solid state, and highlight the fundamental connection between information gain and state modification in quantum mechanics.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2016

Interfacing spin qubits in quantum dots and donors - hot, dense and coherent

Semiconductor spins are one of the few qubit realizations that remain a serious candidate for the implementation of large-scale quantum circuits. Excellent scalability is often argued for spin qubits defined by lithography and controlled via electrical signals, based on the success of conventional semiconductor integrated circuits. However, the wiring and interconnect requirements for quantum circuits are completely different from those for classical circuits, as individual DC, pulsed and in some cases microwave control signals need to be routed from external sources to every qubit. This is further complicated by the requirement that these spin qubits currently operate at temperatures below 100 mK. Here we review several strategies that are considered to address this crucial challenge in scaling quantum circuits based on electron spin qubits. Key assets of spin qubits include the potential to operate at 1 to 4 K, the high density of quantum dots or donors combined with possibilities to space them apart as needed, the extremely long spin coherence times, and the rich options for integration with classical electronics based on the same technology.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2016

A single-atom quantum memory in silicon

Long coherence times and fast gate operations are desirable but often conflicting requirements for physical qubits. This conflict can be resolved by resorting to fast qubits for operations, and by storing their state in a `quantum memory' while idle. The $^{31}$P donor in silicon comes naturally equipped with a fast qubit (the electron spin) and a long-lived qubit (the $^{31}$P nuclear spin), coexisting in a bound state at cryogenic temperatures. Here, we demonstrate storage and retrieval of quantum information from a single donor electron spin to its host phosphorus nucleus in isotopically-enriched $^{28}$Si. The fidelity of the memory process is characterised via both state and process tomography. We report an overall process fidelity of $F_p =$81${\pm}$7%, a memory fidelity ($F_m$) of over 90%, and memory storage times up to 80 ms. These values are limited by a transient shift of the electron spin resonance frequency following high-power radiofrequency pulses.

quant-ph↗