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arXiv:cond-mat/0303474 · Physical review. B, Condensed matter

Spin-orbit coupling and time-reversal symmetry in quantum gates

Dimitrije Stepanenko, N. E. Bonesteel, David Peter Divincenzo, Guido Burkard, Daniel Loss

Published Sep 12, 2003• 70 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study the effect of spin-orbit coupling on quantum gates produced by pulsing the exchange interaction between two single-electron quantum dots. Spin-orbit coupling enters as a small spin precession when electrons tunnel between dots. For adiabatic pulses the resulting gate is described by a unitary operator acting on the four-dimensional Hilbert space of two qubits. If the precession axis is fixed, time-symmetric pulsing constrains the set of possible gates to those which, when combined with single qubit rotations, can be used in a simple controlled-NOT construction. Deviations from time-symmetric pulsing spoil this construction. The effect of time asymmetry is studied by numerically integrating the Schr\"odinger equation using parameters appropriate for GaAs quantum dots. Deviations of the implemented gate from the desired form are shown to be proportional to dimensionless measures of both spin-orbit coupling and time asymmetry of the pulse.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.68.115306

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We study the effect of spin-orbit coupling on quantum gates produced by pulsing the exchange interaction between two single-electron quantum dots. Spin-orbit coupling enters as a small spin precession when electrons tunnel between dots. For adiabatic pulses the resulting gate is described by a unitary operator acting on the four-dimensional Hilbert space of two qubits. If the precession axis is fixed, time-symmetric pulsing constrains the set of possible gates to those which, when combined with single qubit rotations, can be used in a simple controlled-NOT construction. Deviations from time-symmetric pulsing spoil this construction. The effect of time asymmetry is studied by numerically integrating the Schr"odinger equation using parameters appropriate for GaAs quantum dots. Deviations of the implemented gate from the desired form are shown to be proportional to dimensionless measures of both spin-orbit coupling and time asymmetry of the pulse.
We study the effect of the spin-orbit interaction on quantum gate operations based on the spin exchange coupling where the qubit is represented by the electron spin in a quantum dot or a similar nanostructure. Our main result is the exact cancellation of the spin-orbit effects in the sequence producing the quantum XOR gate for the ideal case where the pulse shapes of the exchange and spin-orbit interactions are identical. For the nonideal case, the two pulse shapes can be made almost identical and the gate error is strongly suppressed by two small parameters, the spin-orbit constant and the deviation of the two pulse shapes. We show that the dipole-dipole interaction leads only to very small errors in the XOR gate.
We propose a method for quantum computation which uses control of spin-orbit coupling in a linear array of single electron quantum dots. Quantum gates are carried out by pulsing the exchange interaction between neighboring electron spins, including the anisotropic corrections due to spin-orbit coupling. Control over these corrections, even if limited, is sufficient for universal quantum computation over qubits encoded into pairs of electron spins. The number of voltage pulses required to carry out either single-qubit rotations or controlled-Not gates scales as the inverse of a dimensionless measure of the degree of control of spin-orbit coupling.
In the last years, the electron spin in quantum dots has become a most promising candidate for the realization of qubits, the basic element for quantum computation. In quantum dot spin qubits the exchange interaction implements a fundamental two qubit gate, which originates in the Coulomb interaction and the Pauli principle. Compared to single qubit gates, the exchange based gates are much faster and easier to control locally, motivating the solely exchange energy based quantum computation. The control is based on the exponential sensitivity of the exchange energy on the interparticle distance. Manipulation then can proceed, for example, shifting the single particle states electrically or compressing them magnetically. The practical manipulation schemes require quantitative knowledge of the exchange energy. The spin-orbit interaction plays an important role in this nano-system. Indeed the usual exchange interaction changes its magnitude, while a new term, called anisotropic exchange, appears. In this thesis we propose an accurate effective spin Hamiltonian for modeling spin-orbit-induced spin dynamics in the presence of the magnetic field. We have also performed numerically exact calculations of the isotropic and anisotropic exchange coupling in realistic two-electron GaAs coupled quantum dots in the presence of both Dresselhaus and Bychkov-Rashba spin-orbit interactions. The numerics allow us to establish the goodness of our model and to see the limits of previous statements. Furthermore we find that in zero magnetic field the second-order spin-orbit effects are absent at all interdot couplings.
A single electron spin in a double quantum dot in a magnetic field is considered in terms of a four-level system. By describing the electron motion between the potential minima via spin-conserving tunneling and spin flip caused by a spin–orbit coupling, we inversely engineer faster-than-adiabatic state manipulation operations based on the geometry of four-dimensional rotations. In particular, we show how to transport a qubit among the quantum dots performing simultaneously required spin rotations.
We study theoretically the effects of qubit inhomogeneity on the quantum logic gate of qubit swap, which is an integral part of the operations of a quantum computer. Our focus here is to construct a robust pulse sequence for swap operation in the simultaneous presence of Zeeman inhomogeneity for quantum dot trapped electron spins and the finite-time ramp-up of exchange coupling in a double dot. We first present a geometric explanation of spin swap operation, mapping the two-qubit operation onto a single-qubit rotation. We then show that in this geometric picture a square-pulse sequence can be easily designed to perform swap in the presence of Zeeman inhomogeneity. Finally, we investigate how finite ramp-up times for the exchange coupling J negatively affect the performance of the swap gate sequence, and show how to correct the problems numerically.
The benefit of exchange-only qubits compared to other spin-qubit types is the universal control using only voltage-controlled exchange interactions between neighboring spins. As a compromise, qubit operations have to be constructed from nonorthogonal rotation axes of the Bloch sphere and result in rather long pulsing sequences. This paper aims to develop a faster implementation of single-qubit gates using simultaneous exchange pulses and manifests their potential for the construction of two-qubit gates. We introduce pulse sequences in which single-qubit gates could be executed faster and show that subsequences on three spins in two-qubit gates could be implemented in fewer steps. Our findings can particularly speed up gate sequences for realistic idle times between sequential pulses and we show that this advantage increases with more interconnectivity of the quantum dots. We further demonstrate how a phase operation can introduce a relative phase between the computational and some of the leakage states, which can be advantageous for the construction of two-qubit gates. In addition to our theoretical analysis, we experimentally demonstrate and characterize a simultaneous exchange implementation of X rotations in a Si Ge quantum dot device and compare to the state of the art with sequential exchange pulses.