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


Type
Article
Change log
Authors
Mortemousque, Pierre-André 
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.

Description
Keywords
5108 Quantum Physics, 51 Physical Sciences, 5104 Condensed Matter Physics
Journal Title
Nat Commun
Conference Name
Journal ISSN
2041-1723
2041-1723
Volume Title
10
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Sponsorship
European Commission Horizon 2020 (H2020) Marie Sk?odowska-Curie actions (642688)