We show how a spin interaction between electrons localized in neighboring quantum dots can be induced and controlled optically. The coupling is generated via virtual excitation of delocalized excitons and provides an efficient coherent control of the spins. This quantum manipulation can be realized in the adiabatic limit and is robust against decoherence by spontaneous emission. Applications to the realization of quantum gates, scalable quantum computers, and to the control of magnetization in an array of charged dots are proposed.
We show how a spin interaction between electrons localized in neighboring quantum dots can be induced and controlled optically. The coupling is generated via virtual excitation of delocalized excitons and provides an efficient coherent control of the spins. This quantum manipulation can be realized in the adiabatic limit and is robust against decoherence by spontaneous emission. Applications to the realization of quantum gates, scalable quantum computers, and to the control of magnetization in an array of charged dots are proposed.
Excitonic transitions offer a possible route to ultrafast optical spin manipulation in coupled nanostructures. We perform here a detailed study of the three principal exciton- mediated decoherence channels for optically controlled electron spin qubits in coupled quantum dots: radiative decay of the excitonic state, exciton - phonon interactions, and Landau - Zener transitions between laserdressed states. We consider a scheme for producing an entangling controlledphase gate on a pair of coupled spins which, in its simplest dynamic form, renders the system subject to fast decoherence rates associated with exciton creation during the gating operation. In contrast, we show that an adiabatic approach employing off- resonant laser excitation allows us to suppress all sources of decoherence simultaneously, significantly increasing the fidelity of operations at only a relatively small gating time cost. We find that controlledphase gates accurate to one part in 102 can realistically be achieved with the adiabatic approach, whereas the conventional dynamic approach does not appear to support a fidelity suitable for scalable quantum computation. Our predictions could be demonstrated experimentally in the near future.
Excitonic transitions offer a possible route to ultrafast optical spin manipulation in coupled nanostructures. We perform here a detailed study of the three principal exciton-mediated decoherence channels for optically controlled electron spin qubits in coupled quantum dots: radiative decay of the excitonic state, exciton–phonon interactions, and Landau–Zener transitions between laser-dressed states. We consider a scheme for producing an entangling controlled-phase gate on a pair of coupled spins which, in its simplest dynamic form, renders the system subject to fast decoherence rates associated with exciton creation during the gating operation. In contrast, we show that an adiabatic approach employing off-resonant laser excitation allows us to suppress all sources of decoherence simultaneously, significantly increasing the fidelity of operations at only a relatively small gating time cost. We find that controlled-phase gates accurate to one part in 10 2 can realistically be achieved with the adiabatic approach, whereas the conventional dynamic approach does not appear to support a fidelity suitable for scalable quantum computation. Our predictions could be demonstrated experimentally in the near future.
In this work, we study the resonant nonlinear optical response obtained when optical fields are used to excite charged semiconductor quantum dots (QDs). The basic physics of charged excitons (trions) created by optical excitation of charged QDs is of interest from the point of view of optically driven spin based quantum computing (QC). Stimulated Raman excitation, resonantly enhanced by the optical dipole coupling to the trion state, was used to optically generate electron spin coherence in the ground state of charged QDs. The evolution of the spin coherence was monitored through quantum beats in the phase-sensitively detected four wave mixing signal. The decay of the beats is a measure of the spin coherence time, which was found to be at least an order of magnitude greater than either the trion dipole coherence, or the Raman coherence time between excitons in a single neutral QD. A fascinating outcome of the experiment was the first observation of a contribution to the spin coherence induced by the vacuum field, which is also responsible for spontaneous emission from the trion state, known as spontaneously generated coherence (SGC). QC demands that coherent optical manipulations should be performed within the spin coherence time. We performed coherent optical control experiments, with a pair of phase-locked pump pulses, that showed the quantum nature of the coherence through interference of different quantum mechanical pathways. We showed both in experiment and theory that we can manipulate the spin coherence on the time scale of the Larmor frequency, as well as on an ultrafast femtosecond time scale, corresponding to the optical frequency of the trion state. Finally, resonant optical excitation of both the bright and nominally forbidden transitions from a single electron spin in a QD to the trion state were demonstrated. This allows for direct optical access to all the transitions required for optically driven QC with QD electron spins. We used frequency-domain nonlinear spectroscopy measurements on single QD trions to obtain the trion dipole decoherence and decay rates. Further, we demonstrated that the single electron spin coherence could be generated and detected optically, and found that the spin coherence time was significantly greater than in ensemble measurements at the same magnetic field.
Single spins in semiconductor quantum dots form a promising platform for solid-state quantum information processing. The spin-up and spin-down states of a single electron or hole, trapped inside a quantum dot, can represent a single qubit with a reasonably long decoherence time. The spin qubit can be optically coupled to excited (charged exciton) states that are also trapped in the quantum dot, which provides a mechanism to quickly initialize, manipulate and measure the spin state with optical pulses, and to interface between a stationary matter qubit and a 'flying' photonic qubit for quantum communication and distributed quantum information processing. The interaction of the spin qubit with light may be enhanced by placing the quantum dot inside a monolithic microcavity. An entire system, consisting of a two-dimensional array of quantum dots and a planar microcavity, may plausibly be constructed by modern semiconductor nano-fabrication technology and could offer a path toward chip-sized scalable quantum repeaters and quantum computers. This article reviews the recent experimental developments in optical control of single quantum dot spins for quantum information processing. We highlight demonstrations of a complete set of all-optical single-qubit operations on a single quantum dot spin: initialization, an arbitrary SU(2) gate, and measurement. We review the decoherence and dephasing mechanisms due to hyperfine interaction with the nuclear-spin bath, and show how the single-qubit operations can be combined to perform spin echo sequences that extend the qubit decoherence from a few nanoseconds to several microseconds, more than 5 orders of magnitude longer than the single-qubit gate time. Two-qubit coupling is discussed, both within a single chip by means of exchange coupling of nearby spins and optically induced geometric phases, as well as over longer-distances. Long-distance spin-spin entanglement can be generated if each spin can emit a photon that is entangled with the spin, and these photons are then interfered. We review recent work demonstrating entanglement between a stationary spin qubit and a flying photonic qubit. These experiments utilize the polarization- and frequency-dependent spontaneous emission from the lowest charged exciton state to single spin Zeeman sublevels.
We describe an interaction mechanism between electron spins in a vertically stacked double quantum dot that can be used for controlled two-qubit operations. This interaction is mediated by excitons confined within, and delocalized over, the double dot. We show that gates equivalent to the SWAP gate can be obtained in times much less than the exciton relaxation time and that the negative effects of hole mixing and spontaneous emission do not seriously affect these results.
The spin states of electrons and holes confined in InAs quantum dot molecules have recently come to fore as a promising system for the storage or manipulation of quantum information. We describe here a feasible scheme for complete quantum optical control of two electron spin qubits in two vertically-stacked singly-charged InAs quantum dots coupled by coherent electron tunneling. With an applied magnetic field transverse to the growth direction, we construct a universal set of gates that corresponds to the possible Raman transitions between the spin states. We detail the procedure to decompose a given two-qubit unitary operation, so as to realize it with a successive application of up to 8 of these gates. We give the pulse shapes for the laser pulses used to implement this universal set of gates and demonstrate the realization of the two-qubit quantum Fourier transform with fidelity of 0.881 and duration of 414 ps. Our proposal therefore offers an accessible path to universal computation in quantum dot molecules and points to the advantages of using pulse shaping incoherent manipulation of optically active quantum dots to mitigate the negative effects of unintended dynamics and spontaneous emission.