Chemical Profiles of the Oxides on Tantalum in State of the Art Superconducting Circuits.

Over the past decades, superconducting qubits have emerged as one of the leading hardware platforms for realizing a quantum processor. Consequently, researchers have made significant effort to understand the loss channels that limit the coherence times of superconducting qubits. A major source of loss has been attributed to two level systems that are present at the material interfaces. It is recently shown that replacing the metal in the capacitor of a transmon with tantalum yields record relaxation and coherence times for superconducting qubits, motivating a detailed study of the tantalum surface. In this work, the chemical profile of the surface of tantalum films grown on c-plane sapphire using variable energy X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (VEXPS) is studied. The different oxidation states of tantalum that are present in the native oxide resulting from exposure to air are identified, and their distribution through the depth of the film is measured. Furthermore, it is shown how the volume and depth distribution of these tantalum oxidation states can be altered by various chemical treatments. Correlating these measurements with detailed measurements of quantum devices may elucidate the underlying microscopic sources of loss.

Optically Detected Magnetic Resonance in Neutral Silicon Vacancy Centers in Diamond via Bound Exciton States.

Neutral silicon vacancy (SiV^{0}) centers in diamond are promising candidates for quantum networks because of their excellent optical properties and long spin coherence times. However, spin-dependent fluorescence in such defects has been elusive due to poor understanding of the excited state fine structure and limited off-resonant spin polarization. Here we report the realization of optically detected magnetic resonance and coherent control of SiV^{0} centers at cryogenic temperatures, enabled by efficient optical spin polarization via previously unreported higher-lying excited states. We assign these states as bound exciton states using group theory and density functional theory. These bound exciton states enable new control schemes for SiV^{0} as well as other emerging defect systems.

Narrow Optical Line Widths in Erbium Implanted in TiO2.

Atomic and atomlike defects in the solid state are widely explored for quantum computers, networks, and sensors. Rare earth ions are an attractive class of atomic defects that feature narrow spin and optical transitions that are isolated from the host crystal, allowing incorporation into a wide range of materials. However, the realization of long electronic spin coherence times is hampered by magnetic noise from abundant nuclear spins in the most widely studied host crystals. Here, we demonstrate that Er3+ ions can be introduced via ion implantation into TiO2, a host crystal that has not been studied extensively for rare earth ions and has a low natural abundance of nuclear spins. We observe efficient incorporation of the implanted Er3+ into the Ti4+ site (>50% yield) and measure narrow inhomogeneous spin and optical line widths (20 and 460 MHz, respectively) that are comparable to bulk-doped crystalline hosts for Er3+. This work demonstrates that ion implantation is a viable path to studying rare earth ions in new hosts and is a significant step toward realizing individually addressed rare earth ions with long spin coherence times for quantum technologies.

Thermopower-Based Hot Electron Thermometry of Helium Surface States at 1.6 K.

We have developed a method to probe the temperature of surface state electrons (SSE) above a superfluid helium-4 surface using the Seebeck effect. In contrast to previously used SSE thermometry, this technique does not require detailed knowledge of the nonlinear mobility. We demonstrate the use of this method by measuring the heating of SSE at 1.6 K in a microchannel device with 0.6 µm deep helium. In this regime, both vapor atom scattering and 2-ripplon scattering contribute to energy relaxation to which we compare our measurements. We conclude that this technique provides a reliable measure of electron temperature while requiring a less detailed understanding of the electron interactions with the environment than previously utilized thermometry techniques.

Observation of an environmentally insensitive solid-state spin defect in diamond.

Engineering coherent systems is a central goal of quantum science. Color centers in diamond are a promising approach, with the potential to combine the coherence of atoms with the scalability of a solid-state platform. We report a color center that shows insensitivity to environmental decoherence caused by phonons and electric field noise: the neutral charge state of silicon vacancy (SiV0). Through careful materials engineering, we achieved >80% conversion of implanted silicon to SiV0 SiV0 exhibits spin-lattice relaxation times approaching 1 minute and coherence times approaching 1 second. Its optical properties are very favorable, with ~90% of its emission into the zero-phonon line and near-transform-limited optical linewidths. These combined properties make SiV0 a promising defect for quantum network applications.

All-electric control of donor nuclear spin qubits in silicon.

The electronic and nuclear spin degrees of freedom of donor impurities in silicon form ultra-coherent two-level systems that are potentially useful for applications in quantum information and are intrinsically compatible with industrial semiconductor processing. However, because of their smaller gyromagnetic ratios, nuclear spins are more difficult to manipulate than electron spins and are often considered too slow for quantum information processing. Moreover, although alternating current magnetic fields are the most natural choice to drive spin transitions and implement quantum gates, they are difficult to confine spatially to the level of a single donor, thus requiring alternative approaches. In recent years, schemes for all-electrical control of donor spin qubits have been proposed but no experimental demonstrations have been reported yet. Here, we demonstrate a scalable all-electric method for controlling neutral 31P and 75As donor nuclear spins in silicon. Using coplanar photonic bandgap resonators, we drive Rabi oscillations on nuclear spins exclusively using electric fields by employing the donor-bound electron as a quantum transducer, much in the spirit of recent works with single-molecule magnets. The electric field confinement leads to major advantages such as low power requirements, higher qubit densities and faster gate times. Additionally, this approach makes it possible to drive nuclear spin qubits either at their resonance frequency or at its first subharmonic, thus reducing device bandwidth requirements. Double quantum transitions can be driven as well, providing easy access to the full computational manifold of our system and making it convenient to implement nuclear spin-based qudits using 75As donors.

Atomic clock transitions in silicon-based spin qubits.

A major challenge in using spins in the solid state for quantum technologies is protecting them from sources of decoherence. This is particularly important in nanodevices where the proximity of material interfaces, and their associated defects, can play a limiting role. Spin decoherence can be addressed to varying degrees by improving material purity or isotopic composition, for example, or active error correction methods such as dynamic decoupling (or even combinations of the two). However, a powerful method applied to trapped ions in the context of atomic clocks is the use of particular spin transitions that are inherently robust to external perturbations. Here, we show that such 'clock transitions' can be observed for electron spins in the solid state, in particular using bismuth donors in silicon. This leads to dramatic enhancements in the electron spin coherence time, exceeding seconds. We find that electron spin qubits based on clock transitions become less sensitive to the local magnetic environment, including the presence of (29)Si nuclear spins as found in natural silicon. We expect the use of such clock transitions will be of additional significance for donor spins in nanodevices, mitigating the effects of magnetic or electric field noise arising from nearby interfaces and gates.

Embracing the quantum limit in silicon computing.

Quantum computers hold the promise of massive performance enhancements across a range of applications, from cryptography and databases to revolutionary scientific simulation tools. Such computers would make use of the same quantum mechanical phenomena that pose limitations on the continued shrinking of conventional information processing devices. Many of the key requirements for quantum computing differ markedly from those of conventional computers. However, silicon, which plays a central part in conventional information processing, has many properties that make it a superb platform around which to build a quantum computer.