arXiv subjects

Lieven M. K. Vandersypen

Publications and source records attributed to Lieven M. K. Vandersypen.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Observation of magnetic quantum phase crossovers in a semiconductor spin ladder

Understanding collective phases of strongly correlated quantum magnets relies on theoretically tractable model systems with precise microscopic control. Antiferromagnetic spin ladders provide such a setting, hosting field-tunable gapped and gapless phases at half filling and unconventional pairing tendencies upon doping. Here, we realize a programmable Heisenberg spin ladder in a half-filled germanium quantum dot array featuring site-resolved, continuously tunable exchange interactions. Under a fixed magnetic field, we vary the rung and leg coupling to map the rung-singlet, canted antiferromagnetic, and fully polarized phases. Hamiltonian-learning protocols combining equilibrium and dynamical measurements quantitatively characterize the ladder, incorporating spin-orbit interactions to reproduce the observed crossover behavior. Measurements of higher-order spin correlators -- including four-point correlations inaccessible to conventional bulk probes -- reveal signatures of the underlying phase structure despite the finite size. Our results establish germanium quantum dot arrays as a controllable platform for quantum magnetism, opening routes to investigate unconventional superconductivity in doped ladders.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2026

Controllable interaction between photons and distant spins via vacuum Rabi oscillations

Vacuum Rabi oscillations between a single photon and a single spin demonstrate the capability of harnessing light-matter interaction at the level of a single quantum of energy. Since the observation of strong spin-photon coupling in gate-defined quantum dots, probing this interaction in the time-domain has been a major objective. Here, we carefully engineer a device composed of two spatially separated double quantum dots hosting single electron spin qubits and a superconducting cavity to accommodate microwave photons. We observe multiple vacuum Rabi oscillations between each spin qubit and the cavity. By concatenating vacuum Rabi oscillations involving the two spins, an energy excitation in one qubit can be emitted as a photon and then transferred to the other qubit. When a single photon is emitted, the cavity is prepared in a Fock state, leading to an accelerated vacuum Rabi frequency. These results serve as building blocks not only in exploring light-matter interactions, but also in interfacing semiconductor spin qubits to photonic links.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2026

Reconstructing Quantum Dot Charge Stability Diagrams with Diffusion Models

Efficiently characterizing quantum dot (QD) devices is a critical bottleneck when scaling quantum processors based on confined spins. Measuring high-resolution charge stability diagrams (or CSDs, data maps which crucially define the occupation of QDs) is time-consuming, particularly in emerging architectures where CSDs must be acquired with remote sensors that cannot probe the charge of the relevant dots directly. In this work, we present a generative approach to accelerate acquisition by reconstructing full CSDs from sparse measurements, using a conditional diffusion model. We evaluate our approach using two experimentally motivated masking strategies: uniform grid-based sampling, and line-cut sweeps. Our lightweight architecture, trained on approximately 9,000 examples, successfully reconstructs CSDs, maintaining key physically important features such as charge transition lines, from as little as 4\% of the total measured data. We compare the approach to interpolation methods, which fail when the task involves reconstructing large unmeasured regions. Our results demonstrate that generative models can significantly reduce the characterization overhead for quantum devices, and provides a robust path towards an experimental implementation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Coherence Protection for Mobile Spin Qubits in Silicon

Mobile spin qubit architectures promise flexible connectivity for efficient quantum error correction and relaxed device layout constraints, but their viability rests on preserving spin coherence during transport. While shuttling transforms spatial disorder into time-dependent noise, its net impact on spin coherence remains an open question. Here we demonstrate systematic noise mitigation during spin shuttling in a linear $^{28}$Si/SiGe quantum dot device. First, by passively reducing magnetic field gradients, we minimize charge-noise coupling to the spin and double the spatially averaged dephasing time $T_2^*(x_n)$ from $4.4$ to $8.5\,μ\text{s}$. Next, we exploit motional narrowing by periodically shuttling the qubit, achieving a further enhancement in coherence time up to $T_{2}^{*,sh} = 11.5\,μ\text{s}$. Finally, we incorporate dynamical decoupling techniques while periodically shuttling over distances exceeding $200\,\text{nm}$, reaching $T_\text{2}^{H,sh}= 32\,μ\text{s}$. For the same setup, we demonstrate that dressed-state shuttling provides robust protection against low-frequency noise with a decay time $T_R^{\text{sh}} = 21\,μ\text{s}$, without the overhead of pulsed control and allowing protection during one-way spin transport. By preserving coherence over timescales exceeding typical gate and readout operations, the demonstrated strategies establish mobile spin qubits as a viable solution for scalable silicon quantum processors.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2026

Weight-four parity checks with silicon spin qubits

Recent advances in coherent spin shuttling have made sparse semiconductor spin qubit arrays an appealing solid-state platform to realize quantum processors. The dynamic and long-range connectivity enabled by shuttling is also essential for many quantum error-correction (QEC) schemes. Here, we demonstrate a silicon spin-qubit device that comprises a shuttling bus for coherently transporting qubits that can interact at four isolated locations we call bus stops. We dynamically populate the array and tune all single- and two-qubit operations using shuttling and quantum non-demolition (QND) 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 (GHZ) state, constituting the largest such state ever constructed with gate-defined semiconductor spins. This work opens immediate opportunities to pursue QEC experiments with spin qubits, and the protocols developed here lay the groundwork for the modular calibration and operation of sparse spin qubit arrays.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2026

Distributing entanglement between distant semiconductor qubit registers using a shared-control shuttling link

Semiconductor quantum processors have potential to scale to modular quantum computers, in which qubit registers are coupled by quantum links, enabling high connectivity and space for control circuitry. Individual spin-qubit registers have progressed to two-dimensional systems and execution of small quantum algorithms. Separately, high-fidelity spin shuttling has been demonstrated in linear channels defined by individual gate electrodes. Here, we realize the first shared-control shuttling link integrated between distant qubit registers to demonstrate quantum entanglement in a basic modular quantum processor based on hole spin qubits in germanium. We develop a protocol to compensate for spin-orbit-induced rotations during qubit transfer, allowing for shuttling between qubit registers separated by more than one micrometer in approximately a hundred nanoseconds. Combining local qubit operation with coherent shuttling, we generate Bell states formed by spins residing in separate registers. Characterizing them using quantum state tomography, we demonstrate entanglement between spin qubits in distant registers.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Many-body interferometry with semiconductor spins

Quantum simulators enable studies of many-body phenomena which are intractable with classical hardware. Spins in devices based on semiconductor quantum dots promise 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. Here, we perform spectroscopy of up to eight interacting spins using a 2x4 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 a complete energy spectrum reconstruction. As the interaction strength exceeds magnetic disorder, we observe signatures of the crossover from localization to a chaotic phase marking a step towards the observation of many-body phenomena in quantum dot systems.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Tracking spin qubit frequency variations over 912 days

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 $\pm 100$ 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 $\mathrmμ$V, the qubit frequencies vary by less than $\pm 7$ 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.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Mitigation of exchange cross-talk in dense quantum dot arrays

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, cross-talk from densely packed electrodes poses a severe challenge. While cross-talk onto the dot potentials is nowadays routinely compensated for, cross-talk 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 cross-talk on adjacent exchange interactions by following the singlet-triplet avoided crossing in Ge. We show that we can easily identify the barrier-to-barrier cross-talk element without knowledge of the particular exchange value in a 2x4 quantum dot array. We uncover striking differences among these cross-talk elements which can be linked to the geometry of the device and the barrier gate fan-out. We validate the methodology by tuning up four-spin Heisenberg chains. The same methodology 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 stand-out feature that can be easily tracked and directly returns the magnitude of the cross-talk.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Single-step high-fidelity three-qubit gates by anisotropic chiral interactions

Direct multi-qubit gates are becoming critical to facilitate quantum computations in near-term devices by reducing the gate counts and circuit depth. Here, we demonstrate that fast and high fidelity three-qubit gates can be realized in a single step by leveraging small anisotropic and chiral three-qubit interactions. These ingredients naturally arise in state-of-the-art spin-based quantum hardware through a combination of spin-orbit interactions and orbital magnetic fields. These interactions resolve the key synchronization issues inherent in protocols relying solely on two-qubit couplings, which significantly limit gate fidelity. We confirm with numerical simulations that our single-step three-qubit gate can outperform existing protocols, potentially achieving infidelity $\leq 10^{-4}$ in 80-100 ns under current experimental conditions. To further benchmark its performance, we also propose an alternative composite three-qubit gate sequence based on anisotropic two-qubit interactions with built-in echo sequence and show that the single-step protocol can outperform it, making it highly suitable for near-term quantum processors.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

High-fidelity single-spin shuttling in silicon

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. This has been explored in trapped-ion experiments and using neutral atoms trapped with optical tweezers. 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. First, we form static quantum dots, and study how spin coherence decays as we repeatedly move a single electron between up to five dots. Next, we create a traveling wave potential to transport an electron in a moving quantum dot. This second method shows substantially better spin coherence than the first. It allows us to displace an electron over an effective distance of 10 $μ$m in under 200 ns with an average fidelity of 99.5%. These results will guide future efforts to realize large-scale semiconductor quantum processors, making use of electron shuttling both within and between qubit arrays.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Site-resolved magnon and triplon dynamics on a programmable quantum dot spin ladder

Quasi-particle dynamics in interacting systems in the presence of disorder challenges the notion of internal thermalization, but proves difficult to investigate theoretically for large particle numbers. Engineered quantum systems may offer a viable alternative, as witnessed in experimental demonstrations in a variety of physical platforms, each with its own capabilities and limitations. Semiconductor gate-defined quantum dot arrays are of particular interest since they offer both a direct mapping of their Hamiltonian to Fermi-Hubbard and Heisenberg models and the in-situ tunability of (magnetic) interactions and onsite potentials. In this work, we use an array of germanium quantum dots to simulate the dynamics of both single-spin excitations (magnons) and two-spin excitations (triplons). We develop a methodology that combines digital spin qubit operations for state preparation and readout with analog evolution under the full system Hamiltonian. Using these techniques, we can reconstruct quantum walk plots for both magnons and triplons, and for various configurations of Heisenberg exchange couplings. We furthermore explore the effect of single-site disorder and its impact on the propagation of spin excitations. The obtained results can provide a basis for simulating disorder-based solid-state phenomena such as many-body localization.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Two-qubit logic and teleportation with mobile spin qubits in silicon

The scalability and power of quantum computing architectures depend critically on high-fidelity operations and robust and flexible qubit connectivity. 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 utilization through dedicated functional zones for specific operations like measurement or entanglement generation. Such flexibility also relieves architectural constraints, as recently demonstrated in atomic systems based on trapped ions and neutral atoms manipulated with optical tweezers. In solid-state platforms, highly coherent shuttling of electron spins was recently reported. A key outstanding question is whether it may be possible to perform quantum gates directly on the mobile spins. In this work, we demonstrate two-qubit operations between two electron spins carried towards each other in separate traveling potential minima in a semiconductor device. We find that the interaction strength is highly tunable by their spatial separation, achieving an average two-qubit gate fidelity of about 99\%. Additionally, we implement conditional post-selected quantum state teleportation between spatially separated qubits 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.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Unified evolutionary optimization for high-fidelity spin qubit operations

Developing optimal strategies to calibrate quantum processors for high-fidelity operation is one of the outstanding challenges in quantum computing today. Here, we demonstrate multiple examples of high-fidelity operations achieved using a unified global optimization-driven automated calibration routine on a six dot semiconductor quantum processor. Within the same algorithmic framework we optimize readout, shuttling and single-qubit quantum gates by tailoring task-specific cost functions and tuning parameters based on the underlying physics of each operation. Our approach reaches systematically $99\%$ readout fidelity, $>99\%$ shuttling fidelity over an effective distance of 10$μ$m, and $>99.5\%$ single-qubit gate fidelity on timescales similar or shorter compared to those of expert human operators. The flexibility of our gradient-free closed loop algorithmic procedure allows for seamless application across diverse qubit functionalities while providing a systematic framework to tune-up semiconductor quantum devices and enabling interpretability of the identified optimal operation points.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Near-Term Spin-Qubit Architecture Design via Multipartite Maximally-Entangled States

The design and benchmarking of quantum computer architectures traditionally rely on practical hardware restrictions, such as gate fidelities, control, and cooling. At the theoretical and software levels, numerous approaches have been proposed for benchmarking quantum devices, ranging from, inter alia, quantum volume to randomized benchmarking. In this work, we utilize the quantum information-theoretic properties of multipartite maximally-entangled quantum states, in addition to their correspondence with quantum error correction codes, permitting us to quantify the entanglement generated on near-term bilinear spin-qubit architectures. For this aim, we introduce four metrics which ascertain the quality of genuine multipartite quantum entanglement, along with circuit-level fidelity measures. As part of the task of executing a quantum circuit on a device, we devise simulations which combine expected hardware characteristics of spin-qubit devices with appropriate compilation techniques; we then analyze three different architectural choices of varying lattice sizes for bilinear arrays, under three increasingly realistic noise models. We find that if the use of a compiler is assumed, sparsely-connected spin-qubit lattices can approach comparable values of our metrics to those of the most highly-connected device architecture. Even more surprisingly, by incorporating crosstalk into our last noise model, we find that, as error rates for crosstalk approach realistic values, the benefits of utilizing a bilinear array with advanced connectivity vanish. Our results highlight the limitations of adding local connectivity to near-term spin-qubit devices, and can be readily adapted to other qubit technologies. The framework developed here can be used for analyzing quantum entanglement on a device before fabrication, informing experimentalists on concomitant realistic expectations.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Baseband control of single-electron silicon spin qubits in two dimensions

Micromagnet-enabled electric-dipole spin resonance (EDSR) is an established method of high-fidelity single-spin control in silicon. However, the resulting architectural limitations have restrained silicon quantum processors to one-dimensional arrays, and heating effects from the associated microwave dissipation exacerbates crosstalk during multi-qubit operations. In contrast, qubit control based on hopping spins has recently emerged as a compelling primitive for high-fidelity baseband control in sparse two-dimensional hole arrays in germanium. In this work, we commission a $^{28}$Si/SiGe 2x2 quantum dot array both as a four-qubit device with pairwise exchange interactions using established EDSR techniques and as a two-qubit device using baseband hopping control. In this manner, we can evaluate the two modes of operation in terms of fidelity, coherence, and crosstalk. 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 of 99.54(4)%. Lowering the external field to reach the hopping regime nearly doubles the measured $T_2^{\mathrm{H}}$, suggesting a reduced coupling to charge noise. Finally, the hopping gate circumvents the transient pulse-induced resonance shift. To further motivate the hopping gate approach 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.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2024

Universal control of four singlet-triplet qubits

The coherent control of interacting spins in semiconductor quantum dots is of strong interest for quantum information processing as well as for studying quantum magnetism from the bottom up. Here, we present a $2\times4$ germanium quantum dot array with full and controllable interactions between nearest-neighbor spins. As a demonstration of the level of control, we define four singlet-triplet qubits in this system and show two-axis single-qubit control of each qubit and SWAP-style two-qubit gates between all neighbouring qubit pairs, yielding average single-qubit gate fidelities of 99.49(8)-99.84(1)% and Bell state fidelities of 73(1)-90(1)%. Combining these operations, we experimentally implement a circuit designed to generate and distribute entanglement across the array. A remote Bell state with a fidelity of 75(2)% and concurrence of 22(4)% is achieved. These results highlight the potential of singlet-triplet qubits as a competing platform for quantum computing and indicate that scaling up the control of quantum dot spins in extended bilinear arrays can be feasible.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2024

Low disorder and high valley splitting in silicon

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)$\times$10$^5$ cm$^2$/Vs and low percolation density of 6.9(1)$\times$10$^{10}$ cm$^{-2}$. These low disorder quantum wells support quantum dots with low charge noise of 0.9(3) $μ$eV/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.

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