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arXiv:1906.11264 · Physical Review Letters

Measurement of Backaction from Electron Spins in a Gate-Defined GaAs Double Quantum dot Coupled to a Mesoscopic Nuclear Spin Bath

Patrick Bethke, Robert P. G. McNeil, Julian Ritzmann, Tim Botzem, Arne Ludwig, Andreas Dirk Wieck, Hendrik Bluhm

Published Jul 20, 2020• 11 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Decoherence of a quantum system arising from its interaction with an environment is a key concept for understanding the transition between the quantum and classical world as well as performance limitations in quantum technology applications. The effects of large, weakly coupled environments are often described as a classical, fluctuating field whose dynamics is unaffected by the qubit, whereas a fully quantum description still implies some backaction from the qubit on the environment. Here we show direct experimental evidence for such a backaction for an electron-spin qubit in a GaAs quantum dot coupled to a mesoscopic environment of order 10^{6} nuclear spins. By means of a correlation measurement technique, we detect the backaction of a single qubit-environment interaction whose duration is comparable to the qubit's coherence time, even in such a large system. We repeatedly let the qubit interact with the spin bath and measure its state. Between such cycles, the qubit is reinitialized to different states. The correlations of the measurement outcomes are strongly affected by the intermediate qubit state, which reveals the action of a single electron spin on the nuclear spins.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.125.047701

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cond-mat.mes-hallCross-listedarXiv:2607.26019•Jul 29, 2026
Decoherence of a quantum system arising from its interaction with an environment is a key concept for understanding the transition between the quantum and classical world as well as performance limitations in quantum technology applications. The effects of large, weakly coupled environments are often described as a classical, fluctuating field whose dynamics is unaffected by the qubit, whereas a fully quantum description still implies some backaction from the qubit on the environment. Here we show direct experimental evidence for such a backaction for an electron-spin qubit in a GaAs quantum dot coupled to a mesoscopic environment of order 10^{6} nuclear spins. By means of a correlation measurement technique, we detect the backaction of a single qubit-environment interaction whose duration is comparable to the qubit's coherence time, even in such a large system. We repeatedly let the qubit interact with the spin bath and measure its state. Between such cycles, the qubit is reinitialized to different states. The correlations of the measurement outcomes are strongly affected by the intermediate qubit state, which reveals the action of a single electron spin on the nuclear spins.
Investigations of quantum mechanical effects in macroscopic systems are of great interest to shed light onto the question where and how the transition to the classical world appears. It is also of practical relevance to determine if a bath dephasing a qubit can be described classically or requires a quantum mechanical treatment. We propose a measurement scheme to detect quantum backaction via correlation measurements to answer this question for a bath coupled to a single qubit. The presence of backaction leads to a dependence of correlations of subsequent initialization-evolution-readout cycles on how the qubit is manipulated in between. We compute the autocorrelation function for both an instructive spin model and the realistic case of an electron spin coupled to a bath of 10610^6106 nuclear spins, as found in gated GaAs quantum dots, and show that backaction from the qubit onto the nuclear spin bath should be detectable even in such a large system.
We report repeated single-shot measurements of the two-electron spin state in a GaAs double quantum dot. The readout allows measurement with a fidelity above 90% with a approximately 7 micros cycle time. Hyperfine-induced precession between singlet and triplet states of the two-electron system are directly observed, as nuclear Overhauser fields are quasistatic on the time scale of the measurement cycle. Repeated measurements on millisecond to second time scales reveal the evolution of the nuclear environment.
In many realizations of electron spin qubits the dominant source of decoherence is the fluctuating nuclear spin bath of the host material. The slowness of this bath lends itself to a promising mitigation strategy where the nuclear spin bath is prepared in a narrowed state with suppressed fluctuations. Here, this approach is realized for a two-electron spin qubit in a GaAs double quantum dot and a nearly tenfold increase in the inhomogeneous dephasing time T₂* is demonstrated. Between subsequent measurements, the bath is prepared by using the qubit as a feedback loop that first measures its nuclear environment by coherent precession, and then polarizes it depending on the final state. This procedure results in a stable fixed point at a nonzero polarization gradient between the two dots, which enables fast universal qubit control.
Control of electron spin decoherence in contact with a mesoscopic bath of many interacting nuclear spins in an InAs quantum dot is studied by solving the coupled quantum dynamics. The nuclear spin bath, because of its bifurcated evolution predicated on the electron spin up or down state, measures the which-state information of the electron spin and hence diminishes its coherence. The many-body dynamics of the nuclear spin bath is solved with a pair-correlation approximation. In the relevant timescale, nuclear pair-wise flip–flops, as elementary excitations in the mesoscopic bath, can be mapped into the precession of non-interacting pseudo-spins. Such mapping provides a geometrical picture for understanding the decoherence and for devising control schemes. A close examination of nuclear bath dynamics reveals a wealth of phenomena and new possibilities of controlling the electron spin decoherence. For example, when the electron spin is flipped by a π-pulse at τ, its coherence will partially recover at as a consequence of quantum disentanglement from the mesoscopic bath. In contrast to the re-focusing of inhomogeneously broadened phases by conventional spin-echoes, the disentanglement is realized through shepherding quantum evolution of the bath state via control of the quantum object. A concatenated construction of pulse sequences can eliminate the decoherence with arbitrary accuracy, with the nuclear–nuclear spin interaction strength acting as the controlling small parameter.
The time evolution of spin states of two electrons interacting with a nuclear spin bath in a quantum dot system is studied. The hyperfine interaction between the electrons and the nuclear spins is modeled by an isotropic Heisenberg interaction, and the interaction between the electron spins by Heisenberg exchange. Depending on the extent of the overlap between the spatial wave functions of the electrons, there are two physically different cases, namely, the two qubits either interact with the same set of nuclear spins or they see different nuclear spin environments. In the two cases, the decoherence of the two-qubit state is studied analytically. We have identified a class of two-qubit states that have a rich dynamics when the exchange interaction between the qubits becomes large in comparison to the hyperfine interaction strengths. The decoherence time scale is determined as a function of the bath-spin distribution and the polarizations of the initial two-qubit state. States with large decoherence times are identified by performing a minimization over all the two-qubit pure states.
The dynamics of a nuclear spin bath generates magnetic noise that is a key contributor to the decoherence of electron spin qubits in electrostatically-defined quantum dots. In this paper, we extend the cluster correlation expansion (CCE) technique, which has proven useful for predicting solid-state qubit coherence times across various settings but is limited to shorter time scales, to incorporate stochastic treatments of cluster dynamics in order to efficiently predict slow drifting Overhauser fields over longer time scales. This approach combines quantum evolution with classical rate matrices to enable simulation across a wide range of temporal regimes required to simulate, for example, the long-time convergence of the ergodic T2∗T_2^*T2∗​ from Ramsey experiments. Our methodology is validated against experimental data from various silicon spin qubit systems, demonstrating a strong agreement between simulation and measurement of Ramsey experiments presented in the form of T2∗T_2^*T2∗​ versus averaging time, autocorrelation functions, as well as power spectral densities. Furthermore, we demonstrate significant back-action effects through modeling and experiment; specifically, the dynamics of the nuclear spin bath depends upon the electron spin occupation schedule. Finally, our modeling quantitatively predicts the benefits from compensating for the slow drift of Overhauser fields in qubit operations. Our findings indicate that compensating for an Overhauser rotation measured ΔtΔtΔt in the past results in an effective T2∗T_2^*T2∗​, which we denote T~2∗(Δt)\tilde{T}_2^*(Δt)T~2∗​(Δt) for clarity, under certain scenarios of interest, can be one or two orders of magnitude larger than the ergodic T2∗T_2^*T2∗​ if the Overhauser rotation is re-characterized every 100 milliseconds; that is, T~2∗(Δt=100 ms)\tilde{T}_2^*(Δt = 100~{\rm ms})T~2∗​(Δt=100 ms) can be 101010 to 100100100 times larger than T2∗T_2^*T2∗​.