Spin blockade in Cooper pair splitters
Jami Rönkkö
Entanglement is a valuable resource for quantum computing and information technologies. A promising way to obtain spin-entangled electrons is the splitting of Cooper pairs residing in superconductors. This is realized by a nanodevice called Cooper pair splitter. A Cooper pair splitter is realized by tunnel-coupling a superconductor to two quantum dots, which are each further tunnelcoupled to separate terminal leads. This setup enables the extraction and splitting of Cooper pairs from the superconductor into the terminals via the quantum dots. The quantum dots are commonly fabricated from semiconducting materials like InAs and InSb, that can manifest spin-orbit interaction. This thesis studies the effect of spin-orbit interaction on the spin state of the electron pair in the Cooper pair splitter. Activating the spin-orbit effects in a Cooper pair splitter requires a static magnetic field to be applied to the quantum dots. Together with the gate electrodes controlling the electrostatic energy of the quantum dots, the external magnetic field provides a handle for addressing different two-particle spin states. The spin-orbit interaction can be activated by various combinations of the gate voltage and Zeeman magnetic field, that create resonances between different states of the system. The most interesting coherent evolution, that can be invoked in this way, involves the simultaneous activation of the two spin-polarized triplet states. This gives a rise to an entangled Bell state, (|↑↑>+|↓↓>) / √2, that moreover exhibits spin blockade and thus stabilizes entanglement in the Cooper pair splitter. Secondly, the spin-orbit interaction can be used to bypass suppressed Cooper pair tunneling at a high superconductor-quantum dots detuning. Introducing a large Zeeman magnetic field allows Cooper pairs to tunnel in to the dots given that their spin state flips to the triplet |↓↓>. Although this regime lacks spin-entanglement, it is of interest for creating triplet Cooper pairs and spin-polarized superconducting currents.
Työväentutkimus Vuosikirja•Jan 1, 2020•0 citations