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Semiconductor quantum dots are promising hosts for qubits to build a quantum processor. In the last twenty years, intensive researches have been carried out and diverse kinds of qubits based on different types of semiconductor quantum dots were developed. Recent advances prove high fidelity single and two qubit gates, and even prototype quantum algorithms. These breakthroughs motivate further research on realizing a fault tolerant quantum computer. In this paper we review the main principles of various semiconductor quantum dot based qubits and the latest associated experimental results. Finally the future trends of those qubits will be discussed.
Quantum computers that directly use the principles of quantum mechanics to perform operations on data are believed to have great potential across a vast range of applications, from cryptography, big data, scientific simulation to even machine learning and artificial intelligence. In these fields, quantum computers would crack problems inaccessible to even the largest classical supercomputer today (such as China’s Sunway TaihuLight), which is called ‘quantum supremacy’. Therefore, to master the new technology in the foreseeable future, building a quantum computer becomes one core issue in today’s research.
The basic difference between quantum computers and their classical counterparts is that quantum computers are built on qubits rather than bits. Up to now, many different physical realizations of qubits have been proposed experimentally, including superconducting circuits,[1,2] trapped ions,[3] donors in silicon,[4] semiconductor quantum dots,[5,6] etc. Among them semiconductor quantum dots are most promising considering that their fabrication process is most compatible with standard CMOS (complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor) technology. In the past 20 years, qubits based on different degrees of electrons or holes in quantum dots have been developed, including charge states of electrons,[7] spin states of an electron[8] or hole,[9] singlet-triplet states of two electrons,[10] and other hybrid states.[11,12] Here we first introduce the concept of semiconductor quantum dots, then we present different types of qubits and give the most recent progress, and finally the future trends of those qubits are discussed.
The semiconductor quantum dot is also called ‘artificial atom’, which is a three dimensional potential well formed inside a semiconductor that can trap a few or even a single electron. Materials mostly used for the quantum dots are GaAs and Si. Due to the high mobility of electrons in GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure, GaAs was the first material to host qubits based on quantum dots.[13–15] As illustrated in Fig.
Compared to GaAs, silicon is an excellent host material for spin qubits, for its weak hyperfine interaction and spin–orbit coupling[16] that reduce the magnetic noise. A silicon quantum dot can be formed either in the Si well of an Si/SiGe heterostructure or in a CMOS channel. The Si/SiGe quantum dot can be divided into two categories: the doped Si/SiGe quantum dot and the undoped Si/SiGe quantum dot. The doped type is similar to GaAs quantum dots shown in Fig.
The quantum bit, also called a qubit, is a two-level quantum mechanical system that can be described by the Bloch sphere. In Fig.
There are two fundamental diagrams for characterizing a qubit based on quantum dots: charge stability diagram and engery level spectrum. These two kinds of diagrams for different types of qubits are depicted in Fig.
Using the charge state of a double quantum dot is a direct way to form a qubit. The charge qubit is defined by the excess electron occupation of the left dot or the right dot with electrochemical potentials
![]() | Fig. 4. (color online) Experimental demonstration of charge qubit gates.[25,32] Panels (a) and (d) are SEM images for the devices demonstrating one and two qubit gate operations, respectively. Quantum dots are denoted by circles and the ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Furthermore, the two qubit control of charge qubits can be realized by involving two double quantum dots coupled with energy
Many groups have tried to realize the two qubit gate of charge qubits experimentally. In 2009, Petersson et al. and Gou Shinkai et al. studied interactions between two capacitively coupled GaAs double quantum dots.[30,31] Later in 2015, Guo’s group at USTC demonstrated conditional rotations of charge qubits using GaAs quantum dots with a clock speed up to 6 GHz[32] and the truth table of a Controlled-NOT (CNOT) gate is shown in Fig.
Though charge qubits have the advantage in qubit definition that all the operations can be achieved via electrodes with the manipulation rate reaching gigahertz, they are more sensitive to electric field fluctuations, which limits its decoherence time
Making use of a single electron spin as a qubit was first proposed by Loss and DiVincenzo in 1998.[8] Spin is a degree that reflects mostly the magnetic influence on a particle, thus spin qubits suffer less from charge noises compared to charge qubits and they usually possess much longer decoherence time. The basis states of spin qubits are two opposite spin directions that represent |0〉 and |1〉, respectively, split with Zeeman energy
Moreover, considering that single spin responds only to a magnetic field rather than an electric field, we still need electron spin resonance (ESR) or electric dipole spin resonance (EDSR) to make the spin rotate around the x axis of the Bloch sphere. The ESR technique requires an oscillating magnetic field
![]() | Fig. 5. (color online) Experimental demonstration of spin qubits. (a) SEM image of the silicon CMOS quantum dot for single- and two-qubit operations. The spin states of two qubits are controlled by the magnetic field ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
However, the manipulation rate of the ESR technique is relatively low (
The readout of the spin state is realized by spin–charge conversion.[41] As illustrated in Figs.
Following the original proposal, a two qubit gate based on spin qubits can be implemented through an exchange interaction allowed by the tunnel coupling between two quantum dots. The Hamiltonian[36] can be described as
Moreover, spin exists not only in electrons but also holes in semiconductors. A number of extensive researches have been performed on holes in quantum dots based on Si MOS,[44,45] GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure,[46] and semiconductor nanowires.[47,48] Recently, Maurand et al. reported a hole spin qubit based on an industry-standard fabricated CMOS quantum dot via EDSR, in which the Rabi frequency reached 85 MHz, much larger than that in electrons.[49] However, the decoherence time is relatively short, about only 59±1 ns, the origin of which is still unknown and further study will be necessary to realize a high fidelity hole spin qubit.
Utilizing the exchange interaction between two spins, Petta et al. also proposed an ‘effectively single qubit’ called singlet-triplet (ST) qubit.[10] The energy spectrum of the ST qubit as a function of detuning is shown in Fig.
![]() | Fig. 7. (color online) Experimental demonstration of ST qubits:[52] (a) SEM image of a device for two ST qubit gate. The green arrows denote current paths for charge sensing and electrons in the left qubit is labeled LL and LR while electrons in the right qubit is labeled RL and RR. (b) Fidelity of a single qubit formed in the device of panel (a) through randomized benchmarking. From the decay an average fidelity of 98.6% can be inferred. (c) Process tomography for the two-qubit entangling gate. i and ii are real and imaginary components of the measured process matrix, respectively, while iii and iv are of the ideal process matrix. (d) Gate fidelity of the measured process matrix and most-likely completely positive process matrix (attained by maximum likelihood estimation process) and two-qubit Bell state fidelity as a function of the interaction strength between two ST qubits, yielding maximum fidelity of 90±1%, 87±%, and 93±1%, respectively. Error bars are statistical uncertainties. |
The readout of the ST qubit is achieved by the so-called Pauli spin blockade.[53] As Figure
Two qubit gates based on the ST qubit can be realized by two adjacent ST qubits that are capacitively coupled. In this way, different states in the first qubit will impose different electric fields on the other due to the Pauli exclusion principle, and this difference causes a shift in the precession frequency of the second qubit, leading it to rotate conditionally. In 2012, Yacoby’s group first demonstrated the entanglement of ST qubits in this way and their device is shown in Fig.
Though ST qubit can be manipulated electrically, a stable magnetic field gradient is still needed for universal control. Another method to establish a qubit in quantum dots is to use solely the exchange interaction, in which way the universal control can be realized fully electrically. Such qubit is called the exchange qubit that is made up of three spins in a triple quantum dot, and the coherent spin manipulation is within a two-spin subspace. Exchange qubits can be divided into two categories: exchange-only qubits[58] and resonant exchange qubits.[59]
A triple quantum dot is shown in Fig.
![]() | Fig. 8. (color online) Experimental demonstration of exchange qubits. (a) False-color SEM image of a device fabricated for both the exchange-only qubit and the resonant exchange qubit.[60] Triple quantum dots are denoted by small red circles while a bigger quantum dot acting as a charge sensor like a QPC channel is denoted by a big red circle. Voltages applied on ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The universal control of an exchange-only qubit has been realized both in GaAs[58,60] and Si/SiGe quantum dots.[61] However, they both suffer severely from the charge noise. Recently, a method called symmetric operation[62,63] which reduces the effect of the charge noise by a factor of 5 or 6 is proposed. Further research in three quantum dots is required to prove its feasibility.
The resonant exchange qubit is a modified version of an exchange-only qubit which is operated through resonant driving of the qubit energy gap induced by the always turned on exchange interaction. Further, due to the advantage of resonant driving, the operating point is within a narrowband response only to high frequency electrical noise, which protects the qubit against low-frequency electrical noise. Compared to the exchange-only qubit, the energy spectrum remains unchanged, only the gap between qubit states and |Q〉 is deliberately kept large by setting
The experimental demonstration of resonant exchange qubits was realized by Marcus’s group[64] in 2013. As illustrated in Fig.
Though the exchange qubit can be realized by full electrical control, two detunings,
![]() | Fig. 9. (color online) Experimental demonstration of hybrid qubits. (a) Schematic diagram of the physics underlying transitions between |0〉 and |1〉. Dashed green arrows connect |0〉 and |1〉 with |E〉, and the effective transition between the two basis states is indicated by the solid green arrow. εA and εB mark the detunings where transitions happen. (b) SEM image of a device fabricated for hybrid qubits.[72] ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Also, from the perspective of the Hamiltonian,[70] the hybrid qubit can be described as
In experiments, fidelities of
To realize a large-scale universal quantum computer, it is believed that quantum error correction (QEC) is indispensable, which is a technique that builds logical qubits upon physical qubits to avoid realistic faults during qubit operations, provided that the errors are below a fault-tolerant threshold.[73] Among the different approaches for QEC, the surface code[74] is most promising, which requires a two-dimensional geometry of qubits. However, for quantum dot based qubits, the multiple electrodes limit the possibility to connect one qubit with four qubits around. To overcome this technical difficulty, long range coupling like cavity quantum electrodynamics (cQED) is introduced.[75]
The interaction between light confined in a cavity and atoms is called the cavity quantum electrodynamics. By using such interaction, the spin states and charge states of distant electrons can be coupled together. To implement this interaction for quantum dot based qubits, the strong coupling between electrons and photons should be first demonstrated. However, for a very long time the interaction between electrons in the quantum dots and microwave photons cannot step into the strong coupling regime, although it has been realized based on different quantum dots varying from GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure,[76] semiconductor nanowires,[77] carbon nanotubes,[75] to even graphene.[78–80] In the strong coupling regime, the coherent coupling rate between the two-level atom and the cavity photon
![]() | Fig. 10. (color online) Experimental demonstration of the hybrid circuit quantum electrodynamics.[83,84] (a) Optical image of a silicon hybrid circuit quantum electrodynamics device that was used to demonstrate strong coupling. An Si double quantum dot indicated by the red box is placed at the voltage anti-node of the cavity. LC filters are used to improve cavity quality. (b) False color SEM image of the Si quantum dot used in panel (a). Gate P2 is used to connect the cavity while playing the role of a plunger gate in the double quantum dot. (c) Schematic cross section of the double quantum dot. An excess electron is confined in the quantum well (QW) denoted by the blue line, while a cavity photon with energy ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Another consideration for coupling two distant qubits is the spin degree of electrons. Spin is much more isolated from its environment than the electronic charge, leading to an extremely weak coupling to the electromagnetic field of a cavity with the effective coupling strength
Except for the cQED method, long range coupling can also be achieved by surface acoustic waves,[90,91] superexchange interaction[92] or through a solid state flying qubit.[93] These methods together make a promise for the future use in a realistic quantum computer.
Since DiVincenzo first proposed qubits based on quantum dots in 1998,[11] different types of qubits utilizing different degrees of electrons or holes in diverse materials develop fast during the last 20 years. There are also some other hybrid types of qubits[94–97] that are not included in this paper owing to space reasons, but the qubits discussed here are enough for us to talk about the future trends of qubits based on quantum dots. Until now, it is still so hard to tell which type is better or has greater potential for future development. However, we can compare two different characteristics that are considered most for qubit implementations: fidelity and scalability.
From the view of fidelity, spins in silicon driven by ESR or EDSR are most promising. Recent advances in Si MOS quantum dots and undoped Si/SiGe quantum dots proved high fidelity single and two qubit gates, and prototype quantum algorithms based on two qubits were even demonstrated.[5,42,43] Further developments will concentrate on two qubit gates with fidelity at the surface code threshold for fault tolerance, and QEC of multiple qubits, of which one proposal has been presented based on Si MOS qubits.[98] However, due to the inhomogeneity and variability introduced by the integrated components and complicated electrode arrangement, the scalability of spin qubits is questionable. Simpler manipulations and readout are worth further research. Recent reports on utilizing spin–orbit coupling at the MOS interface to implement ESR[55,99] and using gate sensors for readout[100–104] offer new opportunities.
On the other hand, if we consider more on scalability, qubits that can be manipulated all electrically are more promising. From this point of view, charge qubits, exchange qubits and hybrid qubits are better. Nevertheless, these qubits suffer more from charge noises and the fidelities of them are limited. Recent improvements like symmetric operation[62,63] and large detuning working point[105] seems a good way to solve this problem. Further progress must reside in the improvement of fidelity, which in turn will decide which type is better.
To draw a conclusion, fidelity and scalability both play significant roles in the development of quantum computing. Whatever the future qubit type is, requirements must be met from both sides. The good news is, qubits based on semiconductor quantum dots now are close to these requirements and several different architectures of the quantum dot-based quantum computer have been promoted recently.[106–109] More or less, qubits based on semiconductor quantum dots are now on the way to build a fault-tolerant quantum computer in the near future.
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