Summary form only given. We report the observation of an interesting coherent effect, which looks very much like the so-called Zeeman coherence in atomic physics and is indeed an optically induced entanglement between two oppositely oriented electrons confined to one single QD. This is the first observation of entanglement in semiconductors and is an important step in realizing a quantum logic device such as proposed for quantum computing.
Summary form only given. We report the observation of an interesting coherent effect, which looks very much like the so-called Zeeman coherence in atomic physics and is indeed an optically induced entanglement between two oppositely oriented electrons confined to one single QD. This is the first observation of entanglement in semiconductors and is an important step in realizing a quantum logic device such as proposed for quantum computing.
Summary form only given. A single quantum dot (QD) exciton is considered as a basic unit capable of carrying one bit of quantum information (qubit). Reference has demonstrated exciton Rabi oscillations in single QD's that are equivalent to single-bit rotations. To realize two-bit quantum logic operations in the next step, it is essential to identify and coherently manipulate two interacting single QD excitons. Our earlier work shows that two-exciton entangled states not involving the biexciton can be optically induced. This paper extends the entanglement to include the biexciton and show that all four basis states of the two-exciton system can be coherently manipulated based on a coherent nonlinear optical spectroscopy technique.
Optically induced entanglement is identified by the spectrum of the phase-sensitive homodyne-detected coherent nonlinear optical response in a single gallium arsenide quantum dot. The electron-hole entanglement involves two magneto-excitonic states differing in transition energy and polarization. The strong coupling needed for entanglement is provided through the Coulomb interaction involving the electrons and holes. The result presents a first step toward the optical realization of quantum logic operations using two or more quantum dots.
The properties of an electron pair confined in a coupled quantum dot (QD) system are currently being intensively investigated both experimentally and theoretically. Indeed the manipulation of the two-electron spin states is paramount for the realization of controllable entanglement so as to produce the fundamental quantum gate operations in a solid state quantum computer. The works usually concentrate on the properties of a two-electron system without going into detailed analysis of the contributions from various single-particle states or the effects produced by the constituent single QDs. Zeeman splitting is neglected as it affects only the magnitude of the exchange energy but not the single-particle state mixing. In summary, after numerically diagonalizing the two-electron Schrodinger equation in the model confinement potential of both single and laterally coupled double quantum dots, we computed the contributions from the various single-particle states to the final two-particle wave function.
The electron spin state of a singly charged semiconductor quantum dot has been shown to form a suitable single qubit for quantum computing architectures with fast gate times. A key challenge in realizing a useful quantum dot quantum computing architecture lies in demonstrating the ability to scale the system to many qubits. In this Letter, we report an all optical experimental demonstration of quantum entanglement between a single electron spin confined to a single charged semiconductor quantum dot and the polarization state of a photon spontaneously emitted from the quantum dot's excited state. We obtain a lower bound on the fidelity of entanglement of 0.59±0.04, which is 84% of the maximum achievable given the timing resolution of available single photon detectors. In future applications, such as measurement-based spin-spin entanglement which does not require sub-nanosecond timing resolution, we estimate that this system would enable near ideal performance. The inferred (usable) entanglement generation rate is 3×10(3) s(-1). This spin-photon entanglement is the first step to a scalable quantum dot quantum computing architecture relying on photon (flying) qubits to mediate entanglement between distant nodes of a quantum dot network.
The interaction of electrons and photons lies at the heart of quantum physics. The \nmost notable phenomena which are described by quantum physics but which obviously \ninvalidate a classical description of the electromagnetic field - the photoelectric \neffect, the Compton effect, or the antibunching of photons emitted from a single atom, \nto mention a few - are intimately related to the interaction of electrons and photons. \nElectrons possess an internal degree of freedom, the spin. The spin S of an electron \ncan be described as an internal angular momentum, leading to a magnetic moment \nm due to the electric charge of the electron. Stern and Gerlach have shown that \nthe projection of m onto a quantization axis (defined by an external magnetic field \nin their experiment), e.g., along the z axis, is either mz = g�μB/2 (\\spin up") or \nmz = g�μB=2 (\\spin down"), where �μB � 9:2741 � 10-24 J/T is the Bohr magneton \nand g is the g-factor of the electron (g = 2 for free electrons). \n \n An electron spin \nis therefore usually referred to as a two-level system. Due to this property, the \nspin of electrons which are localized in semiconductor quantum dots has recently \nattracted significant attention regarding the implementation of quantum information \nprocessing: Electron spins can be used as carriers of quantum information. One \ncan define that the spin pointing "up" corresponds to the logical value "0" and \nthe spin pointing "down" corresponds to "1". Moreover, because the electron spin \nis a quantum mechanical property one can form arbitrary coherent superpositions of \n"up" and "down" with a single spin. Moreover, because the electron spin \nis a quantum mechanical property one can form arbitrary coherent superpositions of \n"up" and "down" with a single spin. A system with this property is called a quantum \nbit (qubit). The additional possibilities due to quantum superpositions of qubits are \nexploited, e.g., in the algorithms introduced by Shor and Grover to solve certain tasks \nmuch more efficiently than with a classical computer (i.e., the prime factorization of \nlarge numbers for Shor's algorithm and the search within an unstructured database for \nGrover's algorithm). While quantum computation has presently only been achieved \nin prototypical experiments with few qubits, the implementation of efficient largescale \nquantum computation with many qubits still remains an extremely demanding \ntask. Yet, other quantum mechanical properties of qubits, such as entanglement, \nhave already been exploited experimentally with photons in quantum communication \nschemes, for example, quantum teleportation and quantum data compression. \nIn this thesis, we investigate the interaction of electrons and photons in semiconductor \nquantum dots. Optical transitions in quantum dots enable a direct link between \nelectron spins and photon polarizations due to conservation laws. We show that \n \nentanglement can be transferred from electron spin qubits to qubits defined by the \nphoton polarization, enabling the measurement of entangled spin states via photons. \nThe mechanism under study can also be used for the production of entangled photons, \nfor instance for the implementation of quantum communication protocols. In contrast \nto the presently used sources of entangled photons, the photon source we propose here \nis deterministic, providing entangled photons on demand. It has been demonstrated \nin several recent experiments that the most obvious way to achieve such a transfer of \nentanglement - using the recombination of biexcitons in a single quantum dot - fails \nin the presently available quantum dot structures. We have analyzed the problems \nof this approach. As a solution, we propose schemes based on charged excitons in \nsingle or coupled quantum dots. We discuss the generation of entangled two- and \nfour-photon states. \nIn addition to the transfer of quantum states, photons can also be used to probe \nelectron spin states. We investigate in detail different methods to optically measure \nthe decoherence time of a single electron spin in a quantum dot. The decoherence time \nof a spin establishes the time scale during which coherent manipulation is possible. \nMeasurements of the electron spin decoherence time are therefore highly desirable \nin view of the implementation of spin-based quantum information processing. We \nshow that the schemes we propose can be implemented with current experimental \ntechniques. \nWe then study the magneto-optical effect called Faraday rotation. Using the technique \nof time-resolved Faraday rotation, a recent experiment has demonstrated the \ncoherent transfer of spin between quantum dots coupled by molecules. We calculate \nthe Faraday rotation signal for a coupled dot system and show that a two-site \nHamiltonian with a transfer term captures the essential features observed in this experiment. \nWe also present results for a system of two coupled dots doped with a \nsingle electron. \nWe finally show that the coupled states of two qubits can be detected via the optical \ninteraction with a cavity in the dispersive regime. We present a Schrieffer-Wolff \ntransformation which removes the coupling of the two qubits to the cavity in leading \norder. The different two-qubit states lead to a different spectral shift of the cavity \nline. For a sufficiently low cavity linewidth, this enables the direct readout of a \ntwo-qubit system.