Engineering Spin-Orbit Interactions in Silicon Qubits at the Atomic-Scale.

Abstract

Spin-orbit interactions arise whenever the bulk inversion symmetry and/or structural inversion symmetry of a crystal is broken providing a bridge between a qubit's spin and orbital degree of freedom. While strong interactions can facilitate fast qubit operations by all-electrical control, they also provide a mechanism to couple charge noise thereby limiting qubit lifetimes. Previously believed to be negligible in bulk silicon, recent silicon nano-electronic devices have shown larger than bulk spin-orbit coupling strengths from Dresselhaus and Rashba couplings. Here weshow that with precision placement of phosphorus atoms in silicon along the [110] direction (without inversion symmetry) or [111] direction (with inversion symmetry) wecan achieve a wide range of Dresselhaus and Rashba coupling strength from zero to 1113 × 10-13 eV-cm. Weshow that with precision placement of phosphorus atoms wecan therefore change the local symmetry (C2v , D2d and D3d ) to engineer spin-orbit interactions. Since spin-orbit interactions affect both qubit operation and lifetimes, understanding their impact is essential for quantum processordesign. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.