Condensed Matter

We demonstrate fast and ultrasensitive charge detection with a cavity-embedded Cooper pair transistor via dispersive readout of its Josephson inductance. We report a minimum charge sensitivity of 14 μe/ Hz ????????with a detection bandwidth on the order of 1 MHz using 16 attowatts of power, corresponding to the single-photon level of the cavity. This is the first ultrasensitive electrometer reported to operate at the single-photon level and its sensitivity is comparable to rf-SETs, which typically require picowatts of power. Our results support the feasibility of using this device to mediate an optomechanical interaction that reaches the single-photon strong coupling regime.

With the rapidly increasing integration density and power density in nanoscale electronic devices, the thermal management concerning heat generation and energy harvesting becomes quite crucial. Since phonon is the major heat carrier in semiconductors, thermal transport due to phonons in mesoscopic systems has attracted much attention. In quantum transport studies, the nonequilibrium Green's function (NEGF) method is a versatile and powerful tool that has been developed for several decades. In this review, we will discuss theoretical investigations of thermal transport using the NEGF approach from two aspects. For the aspect of phonon transport, the phonon NEGF method is briefly introduced and its applications on thermal transport in mesoscopic systems including one-dimensional atomic chains, multi-terminal systems, and transient phonon transport are discussed. For the aspect of thermoelectric transport, the caloritronic effects in which the charge, spin, and valley degrees of freedom are manipulated by the temperature gradient are discussed. The time-dependent thermoelectric behavior is also presented in the transient regime within the partitioned scheme based on the NEGF method.

We report on a flexible 300 mm process that optimally combines optical and electron beam lithography to fabricate silicon spin qubits. It enables on-the-fly layout design modifications while allowing devices with either n- or p-type ohmic implants, a pitch smaller than 100 nm, and uniform critical dimensions down to 30 nm with a standard deviation ~ 1.6 nm. Various n- and p-type qubits are characterized in a dilution refrigerator at temperatures ~ 10 mK. Electrical measurements demonstrate well-defined quantum dots, tunable tunnel couplings, and coherent spin control, which are essential requirements for the implementation of a large-scale quantum processor.

The prospect of building quantum circuits using advanced semiconductor manufacturing positions quantum dots as an attractive platform for quantum information processing. Extensive studies on various materials have led to demonstrations of two-qubit logic in gallium arsenide, silicon, and germanium. However, interconnecting larger numbers of qubits in semiconductor devices has remained an outstanding challenge. Here, we demonstrate a four-qubit quantum processor based on hole spins in germanium quantum dots. Furthermore, we define the quantum dots in a two-by-two array and obtain controllable coupling along both directions. Qubit logic is implemented all-electrically and the exchange interaction can be pulsed to freely program one-qubit, two-qubit, three-qubit, and four-qubit operations, resulting in a compact and high-connectivity circuit. We execute a quantum logic circuit that generates a four-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state and we obtain coherent evolution by incorporating dynamical decoupling. These results are an important step towards quantum error correction and quantum simulation with quantum dots.

A generic theory of skyrmion crystal (SkX) formation in chiral magnetic films is presented. We numerically demonstrate that a chiral film can have many metastable states with an arbitrary number of skyrmions up to a maximal value. A perpendicular magnetic field plays a crucial role in SkX formation. The energy of a film increases monotonically with skyrmion number at zero field while the film with Q m skyrmions has the lowest energy in a magnetic field. Q m first increases with the magnetic field up to an optimal value and then decreases with the field. Outside of a field window, helical states of low skyrmion number densities are thermal equilibrium phases while an SkX is metastable. Within the field window, SkXs are the thermal equilibrium states below the Curie temperature. However, the time to reach the thermal equilibrium SkX states from a helical state would be too long at a low temperature. This causes a widely spread false belief that SkXs are metastable and helical states are thermal equilibrium phase at low temperature and at the optimal field. Our findings explain well the critical role of a field in SkX formation and fascinating thermodynamic behaviours of helical states and SkXs. Our theory opens a new avenue for SkX manipulation and skyrmion-based applications.

While nondissipative hydrodynamics in two-dimensional electron systems has been extensively studied, the role of nondissipative viscosity in three-dimensional transport has remained elusive. In this work, we address this question by studying the nondissipative viscoelastic response of three dimensional crystals. We show that for systems with tetrahedral symmetries, there exist new, intrinsically three-dimensional Hall viscosity coefficients that cannot be obtained via a reduction to a quasi-two-dimensional system. To study these coefficients, we specialize to a theoretically and experimentally motivated tight binding model for a chiral magentic metal in (magnetic) space group [(M)SG] P 2 1 3 (No.~198 . 9), a nonpolar group of recent experimental interest which hosts both chiral magnets and topological semimetals. Using the Kubo formula for viscosity, we compute the nondissipative Hall viscosity for the spin-1 fermion in two ways. First we use an electron-phonon coupling ansatz to derive the "phonon" strain coupling and associated phonon Hall viscosity. Second we use a momentum continuity equation to derive the viscosity corresponding to the conserved momentum density. We conclude by discussing the implication of our results for hydrodynamic transport in three-dimensional magnetic metals, and discuss some candidate materials in which these effects may be observed.

The primary goal of this paper is to study topological invariants in two dimensional twofold rotation and time-reversal symmetric spinful systems. In this paper, firstly we build a new homotopy invariant based on the lifting of the Wilson loop to the universal covering group of the special orthogonal group. And we prove the invariant we built agrees with the K theory invariant. We go beyond the previous understanding of the Wilson loop unwinds in more than two occupied bands by finding an obstruction of such unwinding. Then, within this formalism, we classify four occupied bands cases into two categories which may have the same Wilson loop spectrum but in different topological classes. Our theory implies that even when the Fu-Kane-Mele invariant vanishes, the existence of a pair of gapless edge modes is topological protected by this new topological invariant. Finally, we present a tight binding model realizing the non-trivial phase.

In this paper we study the phonon's effect on the position of the 1s excitonic resonance of the fundamental absorption transition line in two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides. We apply our theory to WS 2 a two-dimensional material where the shift in absorption peak position has been measured as a function of temperature. The theory is composed of two ingredients only: i) the effect of longitudinal optical phonons on the absorption peak position, which we describe with second order perturbation theory; ii) the effect of phonons on the value of the single particle energy gap, which we describe with the Huang Rhys model. Our results show an excellent agreement with the experimentally measured shift of the absorption peak with the temperature.

Spin-orbit effects, inherent to electrons confined in quantum dots at a silicon heterointerface, provide a means to control electron spin qubits without the added complexity of on-chip, nanofabricated micromagnets or nearby coplanar striplines. Here, we demonstrate a novel singlet-triplet qubit operating mode that can drive qubit evolution at frequencies in excess of 200 MHz. This approach offers a means to electrically turn on and off fast control, while providing high logic gate orthogonality and long qubit dephasing times. We utilize this operational mode for dynamical decoupling experiments to probe the charge noise power spectrum in a silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor double quantum dot. In addition, we assess qubit frequency drift over longer timescales to capture low-frequency noise. We present the charge noise power spectral density up to 3 MHz, which exhibits a 1/ f α dependence, with α??.7 , over 9 orders of magnitude in noise frequency.

Phase transitions and critical phenomena, which are dominated by fluctuations and correlations, are one of the fields replete with physical paradigms and unexpected discoveries. Especially for two-dimensional magnetism, the limitation of the Ginzburg criterion leads to enhanced fluctuations breaking down the mean-field theory near a critical point. Here, by means of magnetic resonance, we investigate the behavior of critical fluctuations in the two-dimensional ferromagnetic insulators CrXT e 3 (X=Si,Ge) . After deriving the classical and quantum models of magnetic resonance, we deem the dramatic anisotropic shift of the measured g factor to originate from fluctuations with anisotropic interactions. The deduction of the g factor behind the fluctuations is consistent with the spin-only state ( g??2.050(10) for CrSiT e 3 and 2.039(10) for CrGeT e 3 ). Furthermore, the abnormal enhancement of g shift, supplemented by specific heat and magnetometry measurements, suggests that CrSiT e 3 exhibits a more typical two-dimensional nature than CrGeT e 3 and may be closer to the quantum critical point.