Hole spin manipulation in inhomogeneous and non-separable electric fields

TL;DR

This paper investigates how inhomogeneous and non-separable electric fields influence hole spin manipulation in semiconductor quantum dots, revealing new spin-orbit coupling mechanisms and implications for qubit device design.

Contribution

It introduces a novel spin-orbit coupling mechanism arising from non-separability of confinement potentials, affecting hole spin control in quantum dots.

Findings

Non-separability induces additional spin-orbit interactions comparable to Rashba effects.

In-plane magnetic fields can manipulate spins even in symmetric dots due to this mechanism.

Electric field inhomogeneities enable diverse g-factor modulations for spin control.

Abstract

The usual models for electrical spin manipulation in semiconductor quantum dots assume that the confinement potential is separable in the three spatial dimensions and that the AC drive field is homogeneous. However, the electric field induced by the gates in quantum dot devices is not fully separable and displays significant inhomogeneities. Here, we address the electrical manipulation of hole spins in semiconductor heterostructures subject to inhomogeneous vertical electric fields and/or in-plane AC electric fields. We consider Ge quantum dots electrically confined in a Ge/GeSi quantum well as an illustration. We show that the lack of separability between the vertical and in-plane motions gives rise to an additional spin-orbit coupling mechanism (beyond the usual linear and cubic in momentum Rashba terms) that modulates the principal axes of the hole gyromagnetic g-matrix. This non-separability mechanism can be of the same order of magnitude as Rashba-type interactions, and enables spin manipulation when the magnetic field is applied in the plane of the heterostructure even if the dot is symmetric (disk-shaped). More generally, we show that Rabi oscillations in strongly patterned electric fields harness a variety of g-factor modulations. We discuss the implications for the design, modeling and understanding of hole spin qubit devices.