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arXiv:0912.1406 · Physical Review Letters

Proposal for Manipulating and Detecting Spin and Orbital States of Trapped Electrons on Helium Using Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics

David Schuster, A. Fragner, M. I. Dykman, S. A. Lyon, R. J. Schoelkopf

Published Jul 23, 2010• 114 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We propose a hybrid architecture in which an on-chip high finesse superconducting cavity is coupled to the lateral motion and spin state of a single electron trapped on the surface of superfluid helium. We estimate the motional coherence times to exceed 15 μs, while energy will be coherently exchanged with the cavity photons in less than 10 ns for charge states and faster than 1 μs for spin states, making the system attractive for quantum information processing and strong coupling cavity quantum electrodynamics experiments. The cavity is used for nondestructive readout and as a quantum bus mediating interactions between distant electrons or an electron and a superconducting qubit.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.105.040503

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We propose a hybrid architecture in which an on-chip high finesse superconducting cavity is coupled to the lateral motion and spin state of a single electron trapped on the surface of superfluid helium. We estimate the motional coherence times to exceed 15 μs, while energy will be coherently exchanged with the cavity photons in less than 10 ns for charge states and faster than 1 μs for spin states, making the system attractive for quantum information processing and strong coupling cavity quantum electrodynamics experiments. The cavity is used for nondestructive readout and as a quantum bus mediating interactions between distant electrons or an electron and a superconducting qubit.
We propose to couple an on-chip high finesse superconducting cavity to the lateral-motion and spin state of a single electron trapped on the surface of superfluid helium. We estimate the motional coherence times to exceed 15 microseconds, while energy will be coherently exchanged with the cavity photons in less than 10 nanoseconds for charge states and faster than 1 microsecond for spin states, making the system attractive for quantum information processing and cavity quantum electrodynamics experiments. Strong interaction with cavity photons will provide the means for both nondestructive readout and coupling of distant electrons.
The quantized lateral motional states and the spin states of electrons trapped on the surface of superfluid helium have been proposed as basic building blocks of a scalable quantum computer.Circuit quantum electrodynamics allows strong dipole coupling between electrons and a high-Q superconducting microwave resonator, enabling such sensitive detection and manipulation of electron degrees of freedom.Here, we present the first realization of a hybrid circuit in which a large number of electrons are trapped on the surface of superfluid helium inside a coplanar waveguide resonator.The high finesse of the resonator allows us to observe large dispersive shifts that are many times the linewidth and make fast and sensitive measurements on the collective vibrational modes of the electron ensemble, as well as the superfluid helium film underneath.Furthermore, a large ensemble coupling is observed in the dispersive regime during experiment, and it shows excellent agreement with our numeric model.The coupling strength of the ensemble to the cavity is found to be ≈1 MHz per electron, indicating the feasibility of achieving single electron strong coupling.
Hybridizing different degrees of freedom or physical platforms potentially offers various advantages in building scalable quantum architectures. We study the hybrid quantum system of a single electron trapped on a solid neon surface, where the motional states of an electron interact with microwave photons in an on-chip superconducting cavity. By applying a nonuniform magnetic field with a gradient along the vibrational axis, the spin-orbit coupling of the electron's spin degree of freedom and its lateral motion can be engineered. We show that the electron's spin states with ultralong coherence time as a quantum memory can be explored to store the quantum information of a superconducting qubit. As an extension, we also propose to implement high-quality quantum state transfer between the spin states of two electrons trapped in spatially separated superconducting cavities. The present work may have practical applications for realizing floating-electron-based hybrid quantum computation.
The quantized lateral motional states and the spin states of electrons trapped on the surface of superfluid helium have been proposed as basic building blocks of a scalable quantum computer.Circuit quantum electrodynamics allows strong dipole coupling between electrons and a high-Q superconducting microwave resonator, enabling such sensitive detection and manipulation of electron degrees of freedom.Here, we present the first realization of a hybrid circuit in which a large number of electrons are trapped on the surface of superfluid helium inside a coplanar waveguide resonator.The high finesse of the resonator allows us to observe large dispersive shifts that are many times the linewidth and make fast and sensitive measurements on the collective vibrational modes of the electron ensemble, as well as the superfluid helium film underneath.Furthermore, a large ensemble coupling is observed in the dispersive regime during experiment, and it shows excellent agreement with our numeric model.The coupling strength of the ensemble to the cavity is found to be ≈1 MHz per electron, indicating the feasibility of achieving single electron strong coupling.
The promise of quantum computing has driven a persistent quest for new qubit platforms with long coherence, fast operation, and large scalability. Electrons, ubiquitous elementary particles of nonzero charge, spin, and mass, have commonly been perceived as paradigmatic local quantum information carriers. Despite superior controllability and configurability, their practical performance as qubits via either motional or spin states depends critically on their material environment. Here we report our experimental realization of a new qubit platform based upon isolated single electrons trapped on an ultraclean solid neon surface in vacuum. By integrating an electron trap in a circuit quantum electrodynamics architecture, we achieve strong coupling between the motional states of a single electron and a single microwave photon in an on-chip superconducting resonator. Qubit gate operations and dispersive readout are implemented to measure the energy relaxation time T1T_1T1​ of 15μ\muμs and phase coherence time T2T_2T2​ over 200ns. These results indicate that the electron-on-solid-neon qubit already performs near the state of the art as a charge qubit.
Electrons on helium form a unique two-dimensional system on the interface of superfluid 4^44He and vacuum. At low temperatures and weak confinement, trapped electrons can arrange into strongly correlated states known as Wigner molecules, which can be used to study electron interactions in the absence of disorder, or as a promising resource for quantum computation. Wigner molecules have orbital frequencies in the microwave regime and can therefore be integrated with circuit quantum electrodynamics, which would allow rapid detection and manipulation of such a molecule's orbital state. In this thesis, we demonstrate deterministic preparation of one to four-electron Wigner molecules in an electron-on-helium quantum dot located at the tip of an on-chip microwave resonator. The Wigner molecule dipole coupling to the resonator allows us to measure spectral features of Wigner molecules in the microwave regime. We find that different-sized Wigner molecules have strikingly different spectra, and each spectrum serves as a fingerprint for the molecule's internal structure and its surroundings. By modeling the electron-cavity system, we extract each molecule's orbital frequency and electron configuration. For a single electron, the orbital frequency crosses the cavity resonance and we measure a large coherent electron-photon coupling rate of g/2π=4.8g/2\pi = 4.8g/2π=4.8 MHz, which exceeds the incoherent cavity decay rate by ten times. These results provide a solid base for the development of an electron-on-helium qubit. Looking forward, our platform allows for new microwave studies of strongly correlated electron states and can be used to couple a single microwave photon to a single electron spin.