The resonant exchange (RX) qubit is a promising variant of the exchange-only spin qubit in a triple quantum dot which responds to a narrow-band resonant frequency. But the advantage of a permanently applied exchange splitting for spin control generally entails an increased susceptibility to charge noise. We have investigated the influence of electrical charge noise on a resonant exchange (RX) qubit by taking into account uncorrelated noise in each quantum dot, giving rise to two independent noisy bias parameters e and ∆ [1]. Calculating the energy splitting of the two qubit states as a function of these two bias detuning parameters, we have identified sweet spots, where the qubit is least susceptible to noise. Our investigation shows that the sweet spots exist within the low-bias regime, in which the bias detuning parameters have the same magnitude as the hopping parameters between the dots. By calculating and comparing the charge dephasing rates at the various operating points of the RX qubit, we identify a new favorable operating regime for the RX qubit in the case of weak noise, based on these double sweet spots. In contrast, spin noise can be mitigated using exchange-based dynamical decoupling sequences that have been optimized using two different strategies, Uhrig dynamical decoupling (UDD) and optimized filter function dynamical decoupling (OFDD) [2]. Finally, we give a brief outlook towards the possibility of long-distance coupling between resonant exchange qubits mediated by a microwave cavity [3]. [1] M. Russ and G. Burkard, Phys. Rev. B 91, 235411 (2015). [2] N. Rohling and G. Burkard, arXiv:1510.04098. [3] M. Russ and G. Burkard, Phys. Rev. B (accepted) [arXiv:1508.07122].
The resonant exchange (RX) qubit is a promising variant of the exchange-only spin qubit in a triple quantum dot which responds to a narrow-band resonant frequency. But the advantage of a permanently applied exchange splitting for spin control generally entails an increased susceptibility to charge noise. We have investigated the influence of electrical charge noise on a resonant exchange (RX) qubit by taking into account uncorrelated noise in each quantum dot, giving rise to two independent noisy bias parameters e and ∆ [1]. Calculating the energy splitting of the two qubit states as a function of these two bias detuning parameters, we have identified sweet spots, where the qubit is least susceptible to noise. Our investigation shows that the sweet spots exist within the low-bias regime, in which the bias detuning parameters have the same magnitude as the hopping parameters between the dots. By calculating and comparing the charge dephasing rates at the various operating points of the RX qubit, we identify a new favorable operating regime for the RX qubit in the case of weak noise, based on these double sweet spots. In contrast, spin noise can be mitigated using exchange-based dynamical decoupling sequences that have been optimized using two different strategies, Uhrig dynamical decoupling (UDD) and optimized filter function dynamical decoupling (OFDD) [2]. Finally, we give a brief outlook towards the possibility of long-distance coupling between resonant exchange qubits mediated by a microwave cavity [3]. [1] M. Russ and G. Burkard, Phys. Rev. B 91, 235411 (2015). [2] N. Rohling and G. Burkard, arXiv:1510.04098. [3] M. Russ and G. Burkard, Phys. Rev. B (accepted) [arXiv:1508.07122].
We investigate the influence of electrical charge noise on a resonant exchange (RX) qubit in a triple quantum dot. This RX qubit is a variation of the exchange-only spin qubit which responds to a narrow-band resonant frequency. Our noise model includes uncorrelated charge noise in each quantum dot giving rise to two independent (noisy) bias parameters $\ensuremath{\varepsilon}$ and $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}$. We calculate the energy splitting of the two qubit states as a function of these two bias detuning parameters to find ``sweet spots,'' where the qubit is least susceptible to noise. Our investigation shows that such sweet spots exist within the low-bias regime, in which the bias detuning parameters have the same magnitude as the hopping parameters. The location of the sweet spots in the $(\ensuremath{\varepsilon},\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}})$ plane depends on the hopping strength and asymmetry between the quantum dots. In the regime of weak charge noise, we identify a new favorable operating regime for the RX qubit based on these sweet spots.
A triple-quantum-dot system can be operated as either an exchange-only qubit or a resonant-exchange qubit. While it is generally believed that the decisive advantage of the resonant-exchange qubit is the suppression of charge noise because it is operated at a sweet spot, we show that the leakage is also an important factor. Through molecular-orbital-theoretic calculations, we show that when the system is operated in the exchange-only scheme, the leakage to states with double electron occupancy in quantum dots is severe when rotations around the axis ${120}^{\ensuremath{\circ}}$ from $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{z}$ is performed. While this leakage can be reduced by either shrinking the dots or separating them further, the exchange interactions are also suppressed at the same time, making the gate operations unfavorably slow. When the system is operated as a resonant-exchange qubit, the leakage is three to five orders of magnitude smaller. We have also calculated the optimal detuning point which minimizes the leakage for the resonant-exchange qubit, and have found that although it does not coincide with the double sweet spot for the charge noise, they are rather close. Our results suggest that the resonant-exchange qubit has another advantage, that leakage can be greatly suppressed compared to the exchange-only qubit, and operating at the double sweet spot point should be optimal both for reducing charge noise and suppressing leakage.
We investigate the behavior of qubits consisting of three electron spins in double and triple quantum dots subject to external electric fields. Our model includes two independent bias parameters, $\ensuremath{\varepsilon}$ and ${\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}_{M}$, which both couple to external electromagnetic fields and can be controlled by gate voltages applied to the quantum dot structures. By varying these parameters, one can switch the qubit type by shifting the energies in the single quantum dots, thus changing the electron occupancy in each dot. Starting from the asymmetric resonant exchange qubit with a (2,0,1) and (1,0,2) charge admixture, one can smoothly cross over to the resonant exchange qubit with a detuned (1,1,1) charge configuration, and to the exchange-only qubit with the same charge configuration but equal energy levels down to the hybrid qubits with (1,2,0) and (0,2,1) charge configurations. Here, (l,m,n) describes a configuration with l electrons in the left dot, m electrons in the center dot, and n electrons in the right dot. We first focus on random electromagnetic field fluctuations, i.e., ``charge noise,'' at each quantum dot resulting in dephasing of the qubit, and we provide a complete map of the resulting dephasing time as a function of the bias parameters. We pay special attention to the so-called sweet spots and double sweet spots of the system, which are least susceptible to noise. In the second part, we investigate the coupling of the qubit system to the coherent quantized electromagnetic field in a superconducting strip-line cavity, and we also provide a complete map of the coupling strength as a function of the bias parameters. We analyze the asymmetric qubit-cavity coupling via $\ensuremath{\varepsilon}$ and the symmetric coupling via ${\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}_{M}$.
Abstract The implementation of high fidelity two-qubit gates is a bottleneck in the progress toward universal quantum computation in semiconductor quantum dot qubits. We study capacitive coupling between two triple quantum dot spin qubits encoded in the S = 1/2, Sz = −1/2 decoherence-free subspace—the exchange-only (EO) spin qubits. We report exact gate sequences for CPHASE and CNOT gates, and demonstrate theoretically, the existence of multiple two-qubit sweet spots (2QSS) in the parameter space of capacitively coupled EO qubits. Gate operations have the advantage of being all-electrical, but charge noise that couple to electrical parameters of the qubits cause decoherence. Assuming noise with a 1/f spectrum, two-qubit gate fidelities and times are calculated, which provide useful information on the noise threshold necessary for fault-tolerance. We study two-qubit gates at single and multiple parameter 2QSS. In particular, for two existing EO implementations—the resonant exchange (RX) and the always-on exchange-only (AEON) qubits—we compare two-qubit gate fidelities and times at positions in parameter space where the 2QSS are simultaneously single-qubit sweet spots (1QSS) for the RX and AEON. These results provide a potential route to the realization of high fidelity quantum computation.
The goal of this article is to review the progress of three-electron spin qubits from their inception to the state of the art. We direct the main focus towards the exchange-only qubit (Bacon et al 2000 Phys. Rev. Lett. 85 1758-61, DiVincenzo et al 2000 Nature 408 339) and its derived versions, e.g. the resonant exchange (RX) qubit, but we also discuss other qubit implementations using three electron spins. For each three-spin qubit we describe the qubit model, the envisioned physical realization, the implementations of single-qubit operations, as well as the read-out and initialization schemes. Two-qubit gates and decoherence properties are discussed for the RX qubit and the exchange-only qubit, thereby completing the list of requirements for quantum computation for a viable candidate qubit implementation. We start by describing the full system of three electrons in a triple quantum dot, then discuss the charge-stability diagram, restricting ourselves to the relevant subsystem, introduce the qubit states, and discuss important transitions to other charge states (Russ et al 2016 Phys. Rev. B 94 165411). Introducing the various qubit implementations, we begin with the exchange-only qubit (DiVincenzo et al 2000 Nature 408 339, Laird et al 2010 Phys. Rev. B 82 075403), followed by the RX qubit (Medford et al 2013 Phys. Rev. Lett. 111 050501, Taylor et al 2013 Phys. Rev. Lett. 111 050502), the spin-charge qubit (Kyriakidis and Burkard 2007 Phys. Rev. B 75 115324), and the hybrid qubit (Shi et al 2012 Phys. Rev. Lett. 108 140503, Koh et al 2012 Phys. Rev. Lett. 109 250503, Cao et al 2016 Phys. Rev. Lett. 116 086801, Thorgrimsson et al 2016 arXiv:1611.04945). The main focus will be on the exchange-only qubit and its modification, the RX qubit, whose single-qubit operations are realized by driving the qubit at its resonant frequency in the microwave range similar to electron spin resonance. Two different types of two-qubit operations are presented for the exchange-only qubits which can be divided into short-ranged and long-ranged interactions. Both of these interaction types are expected to be necessary in a large-scale quantum computer. The short-ranged interactions use the exchange coupling by placing qubits next to each other and applying exchange-pulses (DiVincenzo et al 2000 Nature 408 339, Fong and Wandzura 2011 Quantum Inf. Comput. 11 1003, Setiawan et al 2014 Phys. Rev. B 89 085314, Zeuch et al 2014 Phys. Rev. B 90 045306, Doherty and Wardrop 2013 Phys. Rev. Lett. 111 050503, Shim and Tahan 2016 Phys. Rev. B 93 121410), while the long-ranged interactions use the photons of a superconducting microwave cavity as a mediator in order to couple two qubits over long distances (Russ and Burkard 2015 Phys. Rev. B 92 205412, Srinivasa et al 2016 Phys. Rev. B 94 205421). The nature of the three-electron qubit states each having the same total spin and total spin in z-direction (same Zeeman energy) provides a natural protection against several sources of noise (DiVincenzo et al 2000 Nature 408 339, Taylor et al 2013 Phys. Rev. Lett. 111 050502, Kempe et al 2001 Phys. Rev. A 63 042307, Russ and Burkard 2015 Phys. Rev. B 91 235411). The price to pay for this advantage is an increase in gate complexity. We also take into account the decoherence of the qubit through the influence of magnetic noise (Ladd 2012 Phys. Rev. B 86 125408, Mehl and DiVincenzo 2013 Phys. Rev. B 87 195309, Hung et al 2014 Phys. Rev. B 90 045308), in particular dephasing due to the presence of nuclear spins, as well as dephasing due to charge noise (Medford et al 2013 Phys. Rev. Lett. 111 050501, Taylor et al 2013 Phys. Rev. Lett. 111 050502, Shim and Tahan 2016 Phys. Rev. B 93 121410, Russ and Burkard 2015 Phys. Rev. B 91 235411, Fei et al 2015 Phys. Rev. B 91 205434), fluctuations of the energy levels on each dot due to noisy gate voltages or the environment. Several techniques are discussed which partly decouple the qubit from magnetic noise (Setiawan et al 2014 Phys. Rev. B 89 085314, West and Fong 2012 New J. Phys. 14 083002, Rohling and Burkard 2016 Phys. Rev. B 93 205434) while for charge noise it is shown that it is favorable to operate the qubit on the so-called '(double) sweet spots' (Taylor et al 2013 Phys. Rev. Lett. 111 050502, Shim and Tahan 2016 Phys. Rev. B 93 121410, Russ and Burkard 2015 Phys. Rev. B 91 235411, Fei et al 2015 Phys. Rev. B 91 205434, Malinowski et al 2017 arXiv: 1704.01298), which are least susceptible to noise, thus providing a longer lifetime of the qubit.
The energy landscape of a single electron in a triple quantum dot can be tuned such that the energy separation between ground and excited states becomes a flat function of the relevant gate voltages.These so-called sweet spots are beneficial for charge coherence since the decoherence effects caused by small fluctuations of gate voltages or surrounding charge fluctuators are minimized.We propose a new operation point for a triple quantum dot charge qubit, a so-called CQ 3 -qubit, having a third-order sweet spot.We show strong coupling of the qubit to single photons in a frequency tunable high-impedance SQUID-array resonator.In the dispersive regime, we investigate the qubit linewidth in the vicinity of the proposed operating point.In contrast to the expectation for a higher-order sweet spot, we there find a local maximum of the linewidth.We find that this is due to a non-negligible contribution of noise on the quadrupolar detuning axis not being in a sweet spot at the proposed operating point.While the original motivation to realize a low-decoherence charge qubit was not fulfilled, our analysis provides insights into charge decoherence mechanisms relevant also for other qubits.