Andreas V. Kuhlmann

Hole-spin qubits enable fast, all-electrical spin manipulation through electric-dipole spin resonance (EDSR), arising from two microscopic mechanisms rooted in their intrinsically strong spin-orbit interaction. Depending on how the electric field acts on the quantum dot, the spin can be driven either by a modulation of its g factor or by a displacement of the wavefunction. Here, we demonstrate control over the dominant EDSR driving mechanism of a hole-spin qubit in a silicon fin field-effect transistor by applying microwave signals to two different gate electrodes, thereby tuning the orientation of the local electric field. We measure the effective g factor, its electrical tunability, and the Rabi frequency as functions of magnetic-field orientation. Their distinct angular dependencies, analyzed using a g -matrix formalism, allow us to identify the underlying driving processes and track their relative contributions for different drive configurations. By selecting the drive electrode, we can switch from a regime dominated by g -factor modulation to one with a strong contribution from wavefunction displacement. This tunability provides direct experimental access to both spin-driving mechanisms and offers a route toward optimized spin-qubit performance.

Hole-spin qubits enable fast, all-electrical spin manipulation through electric-dipole spin resonance (EDSR), arising from two microscopic mechanisms rooted in their intrinsically strong spin-orbit interaction. Depending on how the electric field acts on the quantum dot, the spin can be driven either by a modulation of its g-factor or by a displacement of the wavefunction. Here, we demonstrate in-situ control over the dominant EDSR driving mechanism of a hole-spin qubit in a silicon fin field-effect transistor by applying microwave signals to two different gate electrodes, thereby tuning the orientation of the local electric field. We measure the effective g-factor, its electrical tunability, and the Rabi frequency as functions of magnetic-field orientation. Their distinct angular dependencies, analyzed using a g-matrix formalism, allow us to identify the underlying driving processes and track their relative contributions for different drive configurations. By selecting the drive electrode, we can switch from a regime dominated by g-factor modulation to one with a strong contribution from wavefunction displacement. This in-situ tunability provides direct experimental access to both spin-driving mechanisms and offers a route toward optimized spin-qubit performance.

Building a practical quantum processor involves integrating millions of physical qubits along with the necessary components for individual qubit manipulation and readout. Arrays of gated silicon spins offer a promising route toward achieving this goal. Optimized radio frequency resonators with high internal quality factor are based on superconducting inductors and enable fast spin readout. All-electrical spin control and gate-dispersive readout remove the need for additional device components and simplify scaling. However, superconducting high-Q tank circuits are susceptible to crosstalk-induced ringup from electrical qubit control pulses, which causes fluctuations of the quantum dot potential and is suspected to degrade qubit performance. Here, we report on the coherent and all-electrical control of a hole spin qubit at 1.5 K , integrated into a silicon fin field-effect transistor and connected to a niobium nitride nanowire inductor gate-sensor. Our experiments show that qubit control pulses with their broad range of higher harmonics ring up the tank when the control pulse spectrum overlaps with the tank resonance. This can cause a reduction of the readout visibility if the tank ringing amplitude exceeds the excited state splitting of the quantum dot, lifting Pauli spin blockade and thus leading to state preparation and measurement errors. We demonstrate how to circumvent these effects by engineering control pulses around the tank resonances. Importantly, we find that the ringup does not limit the spin coherence time, indicating that efficient high-Q resonators in gate-sensing are compatible with all-electrical spin control.

Building a practical quantum processor involves integrating millions of physical qubits along with the necessary components for individual qubit manipulation and readout. Arrays of gated silicon spins offer a promising route toward achieving this goal. Optimized radio frequency resonators with high internal quality factor are based on superconducting inductors and enable fast spin readout. All-electrical spin control and gate-dispersive readout remove the need for additional device components and simplify scaling. However, superconducting high-Q tank circuits are susceptible to crosstalk induced ringup from electrical qubit control pulses, which causes fluctuations of the quantum dot potential and is suspected to degrade qubit performance. Here, we report on the coherent and all-electrical control of a hole spin qubit at 1.5K, integrated into a silicon fin field-effect transistor and connected to a niobium nitride nanowire inductor gate-sensor. Our experiments show that qubit control pulses with their broad range of higher harmonics ring up the tank when the control pulse spectrum overlaps with the tank resonance. This can cause a reduction of the readout visibility if the tank ringing amplitude exceeds the excited state splitting of the quantum dot, lifting Pauli spin blockade and thus leading to state preparation and measurement errors. We demonstrate how to circumvent these effects by engineering control pulses around the tank resonances. Importantly, we find that the ringup does not limit the spin coherence time, indicating that efficient high-Q resonators in gate-sensing are compatible with all-electrical spin control.

Semiconductor spin qubits offer the potential to employ industrial transistor technology to produce large-scale quantum computers. Silicon hole spin qubits benefit from fast all-electrical qubit control and sweet spots to counteract charge and nuclear spin noise. However, the demonstration of a two-qubit interaction has remained an open challenge. One missing factor is an understanding of the exchange coupling in the presence of a strong spin–orbit interaction. Here we study two hole-spin qubits in a silicon fin field-effect transistor, the workhorse device of today’s semiconductor industry. We demonstrate electrical tunability of the exchange splitting from above 500 MHz to close-to-off and perform a conditional spin-flip in 24 ns. The exchange is anisotropic because of the spin–orbit interaction. Upon tunnelling from one quantum dot to the other, the spin is rotated by almost 180 degrees. The exchange Hamiltonian no longer has the Heisenberg form and can be engineered such that it enables two-qubit controlled rotation gates without a trade-off between speed and fidelity. This ideal behaviour applies over a wide range of magnetic field orientations, rendering the concept robust with respect to variations from qubit to qubit, indicating that it is a suitable approach for realizing a large-scale quantum computer.

In gate-based dispersive sensing, the response of a resonator attached to a quantum dot gate is detected by a reflected radio frequency signal. This enables fast readout of spin qubits and tune up of arrays of quantum dots but comes at the expense of increased susceptibility to crosstalk, as the resonator can amplify spurious signals and induce fluctuations in the quantum dot potential. We attach tank circuits with superconducting NbN inductors and internal quality factors Qi>1000 to the interdot barrier gate of silicon double quantum dot devices. Measuring the interdot transition in transport, we quantify radio frequency crosstalk that results in a ring-up of the resonator when neighboring plunger gates are driven with frequency components matching the resonator frequency. This effect complicates qubit operation and scales with the loaded quality factor of the resonator, the mutual capacitance between device gate electrodes, and with the inverse of the parasitic capacitance to ground. Setting qubit frequencies below the resonator frequency is expected to substantially suppress this type of crosstalk.

Radio-frequency reflectometry techniques enable high-bandwidth readout of semiconductor quantum dots. Careful impedance matching of the resonant circuit is required to achieve high sensitivity, which, however, proves challenging at cryogenic temperatures. Gallium arsenide–based voltage-tunable capacitors, so-called varactor diodes, can be used for in situ tuning of the circuit impedance but deteriorate and fail at temperatures below 10 K and in magnetic fields. Here, we investigate a varactor based on strontium titanate with a hyperabrupt capacitance-voltage characteristic, i.e., a capacitance tunability similar to the best gallium arsenide–based devices. The varactor design introduced here is compact, scalable, and easy to wire bond, with an accessible capacitance range from 45 pF to 3.2 pF. We tune a resonant inductor-capacitor circuit to perfect impedance matching and observe robust temperature- and field-independent matching down to 11 mK and up to 2 T in-plane field. Finally, we perform gate-dispersive charge sensing on a germanium-silicon core-shell nanowire hole double quantum dot, paving the way toward gate-based single-shot spin readout. Our results bring small magnetic field–resilient highly tunable varactors to mK temperatures, expanding the toolbox of cryo-radio-frequency applications.

The spin-orbit interaction in spin qubits enables spin-flip transitions, resulting in Rabi oscillations when an external microwave field is resonant with the qubit frequency. Here, we introduce an alternative driving mechanism mediated by the strong spin-orbit interactions in hole spin qubits, where a far-detuned oscillating field couples to the qubit phase. Phase-driving at radio frequencies, orders of magnitude slower than the microwave qubit frequency, induces highly nontrivial spin dynamics, violating the Rabi resonance condition. By using a qubit integrated in a silicon fin field-effect transistor, we demonstrate a controllable suppression of resonant Rabi oscillations and their revivals at tunable sidebands. These sidebands enable alternative qubit control schemes using global fields and local far-detuned pulses, facilitating the design of dense large-scale qubit architectures with local qubit addressability. Phase-driving also decouples Rabi oscillations from noise, an effect due to a gapped Floquet spectrum and can enable Floquet engineering high-fidelity gates in future quantum processors.

Pauli spin blockade (PSB) can be employed as a great resource for spin qubit initialisation and readout even at elevated temperatures but it can be difficult to identify. We present a machine learning algorithm capable of automatically identifying PSB using charge transport measurements. The scarcity of PSB data is circumvented by training the algorithm with simulated data and by using cross-device validation. We demonstrate our approach on a silicon field-effect transistor device and report an accuracy of 96% on different test devices, giving evidence that the approach is robust to device variability. Our algorithm, an essential step for realising fully automatic qubit tuning, is expected to be employable across all types of quantum dot devices.