Impact of measurement backaction on nuclear spin qubits in silicon

TL;DR

This paper investigates how measurement backaction affects the lifetimes of nuclear spin qubits in silicon, revealing mechanisms that can be mitigated to enhance qubit stability.

Contribution

It introduces a master equation approach to analyze backaction effects and proposes methods to suppress measurement-induced decoherence in multi-donor qubits.

Findings

Measurement backaction impacts nuclear spin qubit lifetimes.

Nuclear spin flip-flop is a measurement-related decoherence mechanism.

Hyperfine Stark shift can suppress flip-flop, improving qubit stability.

Abstract

Phosphorus donor nuclear spins in silicon couple weakly to the environment making them promising candidates for high-fidelity qubits. The state of a donor nuclear spin qubit can be manipulated and read out using its hyperfine interaction with the electron confined by the donor potential. Here we use a master equation-based approach to investigate how the backaction from this electron-mediated measurement affects the lifetimes of single and multi-donor qubits. We analyze this process as a function of electric and magnetic fields, and hyperfine interaction strength. Apart from single nuclear spin flips, we identify an additional measurement-related mechanism, the nuclear spin flip-flop, which is specific to multi-donor qubits. Although this flip-flop mechanism reduces qubit lifetimes, we show that it can be effectively suppressed by the hyperfine Stark shift. We show that using atomic precision donor placement and engineered Stark shift, we can minimize the measurement backaction in multi-donor qubits, achieving larger nuclear spin lifetimes than single donor qubits.