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arXiv:1103.3435 · Physical Review B

Role of hyperfine interaction for cavity-mediated coupling between spin qubits

Julia Hildmann, Guido Burkard

Published Nov 17, 2011• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We consider two qubits interacting by means of an optical cavity, where each qubit is represented by a single-electron spin confined to a quantum dot. It is known that electron spins in III-V semiconductor quantum dots are affected by the decoherence due to the hyperfine interaction with nuclear spins. Here we show that the interaction between two qubits is influenced by the Overhauser field as well. Starting from an unpolarized nuclear ensemble, we investigate the dependance of the fidelities for two-qubit gates on the Overhauser field. We include the hyperfine interaction pertubatively to second order in our analytical results and to arbitrary precision numerically.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.84.205127

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We consider two qubits interacting by means of an optical cavity, where each qubit is represented by a single-electron spin confined to a quantum dot. It is known that electron spins in III-V semiconductor quantum dots are affected by the decoherence due to the hyperfine interaction with nuclear spins. Here we show that the interaction between two qubits is influenced by the Overhauser field as well. Starting from an unpolarized nuclear ensemble, we investigate the dependance of the fidelities for two-qubit gates on the Overhauser field. We include the hyperfine interaction pertubatively to second order in our analytical results and to arbitrary precision numerically.
The motivating background for this thesis lies in the recent development in the coherent optical control of electron spin states in semiconductor quan- tum dots. One possible and attractive application for these achievements is a physical implementation of a quantum computer based on spin qubits (quan- tum bit) in quantum dots. However, one of the obstacles in building such quantum computer is decoherence caused by the interaction of the electron spins with nuclear spins of the host material. In this thesis we theoretically investigate the effects caused by the hyperfine interaction in optically active semiconductor quantum dots. In Chapter 2 we assume optically induced rotations of single electron spins in semiconductor quantum dots. The optical control of the electron spin states is considered to be conducted by means of Raman type optical transitions between electron spin states. We investigate the influence of nuclear spins on the performance of the single-qubit gates by incorporating the additional effect of the Overhauser field into the electron spin dynamics. To calculate the errors caused by the hyperfine interaction, we determine average fidelities of rotations around characteristic axes in the Bloch sphere in the presence of nuclear spins analytically with perturbation theory up to second order in the Overhauser field. By applying numerical averaging over the nuclear field distribution we find the average fidelity to the arbitrary orders of the hyper- fine interaction. In Chapter 3 we investigate the dynamics of spin qubits interacting by means of an optical cavity. The qubits are represented by a single electron spin each confined to a quantum dot. Knowing that electron spins in III-V semiconduc- tor quantum dots are affected by the decoherence due to the hyperfine inter- action with nuclear spins, we find that the interaction between two qubits is consequently influenced by the Overhauser field. Assuming an unpolarizied nuclear ensemble, we investigate the fidelities for two-qubit gates depending on the Overhauser field. We include the hyperfine interaction perturbatively to second order in our analytical results, and to arbitrary precision numeri cally. Quantum dots can be used not only as physical systems for qubits, but also as sources for entangled photons. In chapter 4 we consider an emission of entangled photons by spontaneous decay of the biexciton state to the ground state. Due to electron-hole exchange interaction, the intermediate excitonic states have a finite fine structure splitting. The electron spins of the excitons also interact via hyperfine interaction with the nuclear spins. We study the temporal and fine structure splitting dependance of the coherence measures considering the effect of the nuclear magnetic field. We find that the hy perfine interaction contributes considerably to the reduction of the photon coherence. One of the possibilities to minimize the decoherence effects of the hyperfine interaction is to polarize the nuclear spins to 100%. However, up to date it was not possible to reach such degree of the nuclear polarization in experi- ments. In a recent experiment by Chekhovich et al. it was shown that high nuclear spin polarization can be achieved in self-assembled quantum dots by exploiting an optically forbidden transition between a heavy hole and a trion state. A fully polarized state in this case was predicted by a classical rate equation, but could not be obtained experimentally. Therefore we theoret- ically investigate this problem with the help of a quantum master equation in Chapter 5, and we show that a fully polarized state cannot be achieved due to formation of a nuclear dark state. Moreover, we demonstrate that the maximal degree of polarization depends on the form of the electron wave function inside of the quantum dot.
The decoherence and fidelity of spin states in a localized single-electron quantum dot in the presence of a dc magnetic field, arising either from the nuclear hyperfine interaction within the dot or due to its coupling with another localized quantum dot, are examined in detail. A general framework for determining the time evolution of the reduced density matrix. for a single dot is presented, which is exact up to the second order in interaction with any reservoir. In particular, it is applied to the problem of nuclear hyperfine coupling, and approximate estimates of coherence decay time are made when the nuclear spins are either polarized or unpolarized and the internal dynamics of nuclear spins is determined mainly by the nuclear magnetic dipole-dipole interaction. The fidelity of a pure unperturbed electronic one-qubit spin state is obtained as a function of time, which is exact even on a very short timescale of logic gate operations. The time variation of the fidelity of the same one-qubit state on the localized dot as a part of the direct product with another one-qubit state on another localized dot arising because of coupling between these quantum dots is also calculated in this paper. In this case, we include both the single-particle tunnelling between the dots as well as the direct and exchange Coulomb interactions, including on-site Coulomb repulsion. This allows for the double occupation of a single dot. It is found that the loss of fidelity of such two-qubit states due to double occupancy and additional phase errors in the presence of appreciable dot-dot coupling can become a more severe limiting factor than that due to the hyperfine interaction in individual dots.
We study the dynamics of entanglement of two electron spins in two quantum dots, in which each electron is interacting with its nuclear spin environment. Focusing on the case of uncoupled dots, and starting from either Bell or Werner states of two qubits, we calculate the decay of entanglement due to the hyperfine interaction with the nuclei. We mostly focus on the regime of magnetic fields in which the bath-induced electron spin flips play a role, for example, their presence leads to the appearance of entanglement sudden death at finite time for two qubits initialized in a Bell state. For these fields, the intrabath dipolar interactions and spatial inhomogeneity of hyperfine couplings are irrelevant on the time scale of coherence (and entanglement) decay, and most of the presented calculations are performed using the uniform-coupling approximation to the exact hyperfine Hamiltonian. We provide a comprehensive overview of entanglement decay in this regime, considering both free evolution of the qubits, and an echo protocol with simultaneous application of $\ensuremath{\pi}$ pulses to the two spins. All the currently relevant for experiments bath states are considered: the thermal state, narrowed states (characterized by diminished uncertainty of one of the components of the Overhauser field) of two uncorrelated baths, and a correlated narrowed state with a well-defined value of the zzz component of the Overhauser field interdot gradient. While we mostly use concurrence to quantify the amount of entanglement in a mixed state of the two electron spins, we also show that their entanglement dynamics can be reconstructed from measurements of the currently relevant for experiments entanglement witnesses and the fidelity of quantum teleportation, performed using a partially disentangled state as a resource.
The quantum state of the emitted light from the cascade recombination of a biexciton in a quantum dot is theoretically investigated including exciton fine structure splitting (FSS) and electron-nuclear spin hyperfine interactions. In an ideal situation, the emitted photons are entangled in polarization making the biexciton recombination process a candidate source of entangled photons necessary for the growing field of quantum communication and computation. The coherence of the exciton states in real quantum dots is affected by a finite FSS and the hyperfine interactions via the effective magnetic field known as the Overhauser field. We investigate the influence of both sources of decoherence and find that although the FSS combined with a stochastic exciton lifetime is responsible for the main loss of entanglement, the two effects cannot be minimized independently of each other. Furthermore, we examine the possibility of reducing the decoherence from the Overhauser field by partially polarizing the nuclear spins and applying an external magnetic field. We find that an increase in entanglement depends on the degree as well as the direction of the nuclear spin polarization.
The hyperfine interaction with nuclear spins (or, Overhauser noise) has long been viewed as a leading source of decoherence in individual quantum dot spin qubits. Here we show that in a coupled multiqubit system consisting of as few as four spins, interactions with nuclear spins can have the opposite effect where they instead preserve the collective quantum state of the system. This noise-induced state preservation can be realized in a linear spin qubit array using current technological capabilities. Our proposal requires no control over the Overhauser fields in the array; only experimental control over the average interqubit coupling between nearest neighbors is needed, and this is readily achieved by tuning gate voltages. Our results illustrate how the role of the environment can transform from harmful to helpful in the progression from single-qubit to multiqubit quantum systems.
We investigate theoretically the hyperfine-induced dephasing of two-electron-spin states in a double quantum dot with a finite singlet-triplet splitting JJJ. In particular, we derive an effective pure dephasing Hamiltonian, which is valid when the hyperfine-induced mixing is suppressed due to the relatively large JJJ and the external magnetic field. Using both a quantum theory based on resummation of ring diagrams and semiclassical methods, we identify the dominant dephasing processes in regimes defined by values of the external magnetic field, the singlet-triplet splitting, and inhomogeneity in the total effective magnetic field. We address both free induction and Hahn echo decay of superposition of singlet and unpolarized triplet states (both cases are relevant for singlet-triplet qubits realized in double quantum dots). We also study hyperfine-induced exchange gate errors for two single-spin qubits. Results for III-V semiconductors as well as silicon-based quantum dots are presented.