Atomic qubits in silicon

Abstract

Extremely long electron and nuclear spin coherence times have been demonstrated in isotopically pure Si-28 [1, 2] making silicon a promising semiconductor material for spin-based quantum information. The two-level spin state of single electrons bound to shallow phosphorus donors in silicon in particular provide well defined, reproducible qubits [3]. An important challenge in these systems is the realisation of an architecture, where we can position donors within a crystalline environment with approx. 20-50nm separation, individually address each donor, manipulate the electron spins using ESR techniques and read-out their spin states.