Electrically-triggered spin-photon devices in silicon

The Silicon Quantum Group has submitted a new pre-print by PhD student Michael Dobinson.

In their paper, “Electrically-triggered spin-photon devices in silicon”, they show a new electrical control mechanism that allows for electrical generation of single photons, which can then be used to initialize the T centre's spin qubit in silicon diodes.

This work is the first-ever demonstration of an electrically-injected single-photon source utilizing silicon colour centres. Previouly, combining electrically-triggered single-photon sources with silicon photonics required integrating other materials in complex and costly material processing steps.  Using the T centre, the group from SFU Physics demonstrated a silicon-native single-photon source requiring only standard silicon fabrication steps. 

Not only does this research introduce a new single-photon source, it also presents a way to initialize the spin qubit of the T centre electrically. This was done by heralding the electroluminescence produced when a single T centre is electrically excited.

The authors note that in the future, these techniques can also be applied to entangle spin qubits.  Future schemes that leverage electrical controls may allow for more qubits to fit on a chip as well as faster entanglement.

Read the full paper on arXiv.