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arXiv:2608.09116

Phonon-assisted transport and hole-phonon coupling in GaAs double quantum dots

Jin Leng, Wei-Zhu Liao, Hao-Tian Jiang, Di Liu, Bao-Chuan Wang, Gang Cao, Hai-Ou Li, Guo-Ping Guo

cond-mat.mes-hallquant-phSubmitted Aug 10, 2026• Announced Aug 11, 2026
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Abstract

Hole-phonon interactions play an important role in transport and decoherence processes in semiconductor quantum dots. Here we investigate hole-phonon coupling in a gate-defined GaAs double quantum dot integrated with a quantum point contact charge sensor. Under finite source-drain bias, pronounced oscillatory stripe patterns appear near specific charge transition regions in the charge stability diagram. We attribute these oscillations to phonon emission during inelastic interdot tunneling. A theoretical model including piezoelectric hole-phonon coupling reproduces the observed patterns. Furthermore, our analysis shows that the oscillations emerge only in particular charge configurations. Our results provide direct insight into phonon-assisted transport and coherent hole-phonon interactions in semiconductor quantum dots.

Journal reference
Chin. Phys. Lett. 43, 070602 (2026)
DOI
10.1088/0256-307X/43/7/070602

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We study decoherence of a quantum dot charge qubit due to coupling to piezoelectric acoustic phonons in the Born--Markov approximation. After including appropriate form factors, we find that phonon decoherence rates are one to two orders of magnitude weaker than was previously predicted. We calculate the dependence of the QQQ factor on lattice temperature, quantum dot size, and interdot coupling. Our results suggest that mechanisms other than phonon decoherence play a more significant role in current experimental setups.
Long-distance transfer of quantum information in architectures based on quantum dot spin qubits will be necessary for their scalability. One way of achieving this goal is to simply move the electron between two quantum registers. Precise control over the process of shuttling such a single electron through a chain of tunnel-coupled quantum dots is possible when interdot energy detunings are changed adiabatically. The deterministic character of shuttling is, however, endangered by the open nature of the system, as the transferred electron is coupled to thermal reservoirs: sources of fluctuations of electric fields and lattice vibrations. We present a comprehensive analysis showing how the electron transfer between two voltage-controlled quantum dots is affected by electron-phonon scattering and interaction with sources of 1/f1/f1/f and Johnson charge noise in both detuning and tunnel coupling. The electron-phonon scattering turns out to be irrelevant in Si quantum dots, with charge noise dominating the dynamics of the system at slow detuning sweep, when the electron spends more time delocalized between the dots (i.e., near the anticrossing of the tunnel-coupled states). Competition between the effects of charge noise and the Landau-Zener effect leads to an existence of an optimal detuning sweep rate, leading to minimal probability of leaving the electron behind. In GaAs quantum dots, on the other hand, piezoelectric coupling to phonons is strong enough to make the processes of interdot transfer assisted by phonon emission and absorption dominate over transitions caused by charge noise. The probability of leaving the electron behind then depends monotonically on detuning the sweep rate over a broad range of rates, and values much smaller than in silicon can be obtained for slow sweeps. However, after taking into account limitations on transfer time imposed by the need for preservation of a shuttled electron's spin coherence, the minimal probabilities of leaving the electron behind in both GaAs- and Si-based double quantum dots turn out to be of the same order of magnitude. Bringing them down below ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}3}$ requires temperatures $\ensuremath{\le}100$ mK and tunnel couplings above $20\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{eV}$.