Sound-driven single-electron transfer in a circuit of coupled quantum rails

Takada, S. et al. (2019) Sound-driven single-electron transfer in a circuit of coupled quantum rails. Nature Communications, 10, 4557. (doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-12514-w) (PMID:31594936) (PMCID:PMC6783466)

Abstract

Surface acoustic waves (SAWs) strongly modulate the shallow electric potential in piezoelectric materials. In semiconductor heterostructures such as GaAs/AlGaAs, SAWs can thus be employed to transfer individual electrons between distant quantum dots. This transfer mechanism makes SAW technologies a promising candidate to convey quantum information through a circuit of quantum logic gates. Here we present two essential building blocks of such a SAW-driven quantum circuit. First, we implement a directional coupler allowing to partition a flying electron arbitrarily into two paths of transportation. Second, we demonstrate a triggered single-electron source enabling synchronisation of the SAW-driven sending process. Exceeding a single-shot transfer efficiency of 99%, we show that a SAW-driven integrated circuit is feasible with single electrons on a large scale. Our results pave the way to perform quantum logic operations with flying electron qubits.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Georgiou, Dr Giorgos
• Authors: Takada, S., Edlbauer, H., Lepage, H. V., Wang, J., Mortemousque, P.-A., Georgiou, G., Barnes, C. H. W., Ford, C. J. B., Yuan, M., Santos, P. V., Waintal, X., Ludwig, A., Wieck, A. D., Urdampilleta, M., Meunier, T., and Bäuerle, C.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Electronics and Nanoscale Engineering
• Journal Name: Nature Communications
• Publisher: Nature Research
• ISSN: 2041-1723
• ISSN (Online): 2041-1723
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2020 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Nature Communications 10: 4557
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License