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S. D. Barrett

Publications and source records attributed to S. D. Barrett.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2014

Splitting a single Cooper-pair with microwave light

We measure an aluminum superconducting double quantum dot and find that its electrical impedance, specifically its quantum capacitance, depends on whether or not it contains a single broken Cooper pair. In this way we are able to observe, in real time, the thermally activated breaking and recombination of Cooper pairs. Furthermore, we apply external microwave light and break single Cooper pairs by the absorption of single microwave photons.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗
arXiv2013

Stimulated Phonon Emission in a Driven Double Quantum Dot

The compound semiconductor gallium arsenide (GaAs) provides an ultra-clean platform for storing and manipulating quantum information, encoded in the charge or spin states of electrons confined in nanostructures. The absence of inversion symmetry in the zinc-blende crystal structure of GaAs however, results in strong piezoelectric coupling between lattice acoustic phonons and electrons, a potential hindrance for quantum computing architectures that can be charge-sensitive during certain operations. Here we examine phonon generation in a GaAs double dot, configured as a single- or two-electron charge qubit, and driven by the application of microwaves via surface gates. In a process that is a microwave analog of the Raman effect, stimulated phonon emission is shown to produce population inversion of a two-level system and provides spectroscopic signatures of the phononic environment created by the nanoscale device geometry.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗
arXiv2009

A superconducting cavity bus for single Nitrogen Vacancy defect centres in diamond

Circuit-QED has demonstrated very strong coupling between individual microwave photons trapped in a superconducting coplanar resonator and nearby superconducting qubits. In this work we show how, by designing a novel interconnect, one can strongly connect the superconducting resonator, via a magnetic interaction, to a small number (perhaps single), of electronic spins. By choosing the electronic spin to be within a Nitrogen Vacancy centre in diamond one can perform optical readout, polarization and control of this electron spin using microwave and radio frequency irradiation. More importantly, by utilising Nitrogen Vacancy centres with nearby 13C nuclei, using this interconnect, one has the potential build a quantum device where the nuclear spin qubits are connected over centimeter distances via the Nitrogen Vacancy electronic spins interacting through the superconducting bus.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2009

Error Correction and Degeneracy in Surface Codes Suffering Loss

Many proposals for quantum information processing are subject to detectable loss errors. In this paper, we give a detailed account of recent results in which we showed that topological quantum memories can simultaneously tolerate both loss errors and computational errors, with a graceful tradeoff between the threshold for each. We further discuss a number of subtleties that arise when implementing error correction on topological memories. We particularly focus on the role played by degeneracy in the matching algorithms, and present a systematic study its effects on thresholds. We also discuss some of the implications of degeneracy for estimating phase transition temperatures in the random bond Ising model.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2008

Effect of frequency mismatched photons in quantum information processing

Many promising schemes for quantum information processing (QIP) rely on few-photon interference effects. In these proposals, the photons are treated as being indistinguishable particles. However, single photon sources are typically subject to variation from device to device. Thus the photons emitted from different sources will not be perfectly identical, and there will be some variation in their frequencies. Here, we analyse the effect of this frequency mismatch on QIP schemes. As examples, we consider the distributed QIP protocol proposed by Barrett and Kok, and Hong-Ou-Mandel interference which lies at the heart of many linear optical schemes for quantum computing. In the distributed QIP protocol, we find that the fidelity of entangled qubit states depends crucially on the time resolution of single photon detectors. In particular, there is no reduction in the fidelity when an ideal detector model is assumed, while reduced fidelities may be encountered when using realistic detectors with a finite response time. We obtain similar results in the case of Hong-Ou-Mandel interference -- with perfect detectors, a modified version of quantum interference is seen, and the visibility of the interference pattern is reduced as the detector time resolution is reduced. Our findings indicate that problems due to frequency mismatch can be overcome, provided sufficiently fast detectors are available.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2008

Scalable quantum computing with atomic ensembles

Atomic ensembles, comprising clouds of atoms addressed by laser fields, provide an attractive system for both the storage of quantum information, and the coherent conversion of quantum information between atomic and optical degrees of freedom. In a landmark paper, Duan et al. (DLCZ) [1] showed that atomic ensembles could be used as nodes of a quantum repeater network capable of sharing pairwise quantum entanglement between systems separated by arbitrarily large distances. In recent years, a number of promising experiments have demonstrated key aspects of this proposal [2-7]. Here, we describe a scheme for full scale quantum computing with atomic ensembles. Our scheme uses similar methods to those already demonstrated experimentally, and yet has information processing capabilities far beyond those of a quantum repeater.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2007

Quantum information processing via a lossy bus

We describe a method to perform two qubit measurements and logic operations on pairs of qubits which each interact with a harmonic oscillator degree of freedom (the \emph{bus}), but do not directly interact with one another. Our scheme uses only weak interactions between the qubit and the bus, homodyne measurements, and single qubit operations. In contrast to earlier schemes, the technique presented here is extremely robust to photon loss in the bus mode, and can function with high fidelity even when the rate of photon loss is comparable to the strength of the qubit-bus coupling.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2006

A Model for an Irreversible Bias Current in the Superconducting Qubit Measurement Process

The superconducting charge-phase `Quantronium' qubit is considered in order to develop a model for the measurement process used in the experiment of Vion et. al. [Science 296 886 (2002)]. For this model we propose a method for including the bias current in the read-out process in a fundamentally irreversible way, which to first order, is approximated by the Josephson junction tilted-washboard potential phenomenology. The decohering bias current is introduced in the form of a Lindblad operator and the Wigner function for the current biased read-out Josephson junction is derived and analyzed. During the read-out current pulse used in the Quantronium experiment we find that the coherence of the qubit initially prepared in a symmetric superposition state is lost at a time of 0.2 nanoseconds after the bias current pulse has been applied. A timescale which is much shorter than the experimental readout time. Additionally we look at the effect of Johnson-Nyquist noise with zero mean from the current source during the qubit manipulation and show that the decoherence due to the irreversible bias current description is an order of magnitude smaller than that found through adding noise to the reversible tilted washboard potential model. Our irreversible bias current model is also applicable to the persistent current based qubits where the state is measured according to its flux via a small inductance direct current superconducting quantum interference device (DC-SQUID).

quant-ph↗
arXiv2005

Population inversion of driven two-level systems in a structureless bath

We derive a master equation for a driven double-dot damped by an unstructured phonon bath, and calculate the spectral density. We find that bath mediated photon absorption is important at relatively strong driving, and may even dominate the dynamics, inducing population inversion of the double dot system. This phenomenon is consistent with recent experimental observations.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗
arXiv2005

Efficient optical quantum information processing

Quantum information offers the promise of being able to perform certain communication and computation tasks that cannot be done with conventional information technology (IT). Optical Quantum Information Processing (QIP) holds particular appeal, since it offers the prospect of communicating and computing with the same type of qubit. Linear optical techniques have been shown to be scalable, but the corresponding quantum computing circuits need many auxiliary resources. Here we present an alternative approach to optical QIP, based on the use of weak cross-Kerr nonlinearities and homodyne measurements. We show how this approach provides the fundamental building blocks for highly efficient non-absorbing single photon number resolving detectors, two qubit parity detectors, Bell state measurements and finally near deterministic control-not (CNOT) gates. These are essential QIP devices

quant-ph↗
arXiv2005

A symmetry analyser for non-destructive Bell state detection using EIT

We describe a method to project photonic two-qubit states onto the symmetric and antisymmetric subspaces of their Hilbert space. This device utilizes an ancillary coherent state, together with a weak cross-Kerr non-linearity, generated, for example, by electromagnetically induced transparency. The symmetry analyzer is non-destructive, and works for small values of the cross-Kerr coupling. Furthermore, this device can be used to construct a non-destructive Bell state detector.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2004

Continuous measurement of a microwave-driven solid state qubit

We analyze the dynamics of a continuously observed, damped, microwave driven solid state charge qubit. The qubit consists of a single electron in a double well potential, coupled to an oscillating electric field, and which is continuously observed by a nearby point contact electrometer. The microwave field induces transitions between the qubit eigenstates, which have a profound effect on the detector output current. We show that useful information about the qubit dynamics, such as dephasing and relaxation rates, and the Rabi frequency, can be extracted from the DC detector conductance and the detector output noise power spectrum. We also demonstrate that these phenomena can be used for single shot electron \emph{spin} readout, for spin based quantum information processing.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗
arXiv2004

Two spin measurements in exchange interaction quantum computers

We propose and analyse a method for single shot measurement of the total spin of a two electron system in a coupled quantum dot or donor impurity structure, which can be used for readout in a quantum computer. The spin can be inferred by observing spin dependent fluctuations of charge between the two sites, via a nearby electrometer. Realistic experimental parameters indicate that the fidelity of the measurement can be larger than 0.9999 with existing or near-future technology.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗
arXiv2004

Selective spin coupling through a single exciton

We present a novel scheme for performing a conditional phase gate between two spin qubits in adjacent semiconductor quantum dots through delocalized single exciton states, formed through the inter-dot Foerster interaction. We consider two resonant quantum dots, each containing a single excess conduction band electron whose spin embodies the qubit. We demonstrate that both the two-qubit gate, and arbitrary single-qubit rotations, may be realized to a high fidelity with current semiconductor and laser technology.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2004

Parity measurement of one- and two-electron double well systems

We outline a scheme to accomplish measurements of a solid state double well system (DWS) with both one and two electrons in non-localised bases. We show that, for a single particle, measuring the local charge distribution at the midpoint of a DWS using an SET as a sensitive electrometer amounts to performing a projective measurement in the parity (symmetric/antisymmetric) eigenbasis. For two-electrons in a DWS, a similar configuration of SET results in close-to-projective measurement in the singlet/triplet basis. We analyse the sensitivity of the scheme to asymmetry in the SET position for some experimentally relevant parameter, and show that it is realisable in experiment.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗
arXiv2004

Continuous measurement of a charge qubit with a point contact detector at arbitrary bias: the role of inelastic tunnelling

We study the dynamics of a charge qubit, consisting of a single electron in a double well potential, coupled to a point-contact (PC) electrometer using the quantum trajectories formalism. In contrast with previous work, our analysis is valid for arbitrary source-drain bias across the PC, but is restricted to the sub-Zeno limit. We find that the dynamics is strongly affected by inelastic tunnelling processes in the PC. These processes reduce the efficiency of the PC as a qubit readout device, and induce relaxation even when the source-drain bias is zero. We show that the sub-Zeno dynamics are divided into two regimes: low- and high-bias in which the PC current and current power spectra show markedly different behaviour. To further illustrate the division between the regimes and the inefficiency of the detector, we present simulated quantum trajectories of the conditional qubit and detector dynamics. We also describe how single shot measurements in an arbitrary basis may be achieved in the sub-Zeno regime.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗
arXiv2004

Continuous quantum measurement: inelastic tunnelling suppresses current oscillations

We study the dynamics of a charge qubit, consisting of a single electron in a double well potential coupled to a point-contact (PC) electrometer, using the quantum trajectories formalism. Contrary to previous predictions, we show formally that, in the sub-Zeno limit, coherent oscillations in the detector output are suppressed, and the dynamics is dominated by inelastic processes in the PC. Furthermore, these reduce the detector efficiency and induce relaxation even when the source-drain bias is zero. This is of practical significance since it means the detector will act as a source of decoherence. Finally, we show that the sub-Zeno dynamics is divided into two regimes: low- and high-bias in which the PC current power spectra show markedly different behaviour.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗