Silicon T centre hyperfine structure and memory protection schemes

TL;DR

This paper investigates the hyperfine structure of silicon T centres and proposes schemes to protect their hydrogen memory qubits from decoherence, advancing silicon-based quantum network technology.

Contribution

It determines the hyperfine coupling tensor of the T centre's hydrogen and introduces protection schemes for the memory qubit during optical operations.

Findings

Hyperfine coupling tensor of T centre's hydrogen determined

Protection schemes against dephasing and relaxation proposed

Enhances practical implementation of silicon quantum networks

Abstract

Combining the long-coherence of spin qubits and the capability to transmit information and entanglement through photons, spin-photon interfaces (SPIs) are a promising platform for networked quantum computation and long-distance quantum communication. SPIs that possess local `memory' qubits in addition to the optically coupled `communication' qubit can improve remote entanglement fidelities through brokered entanglement schemes and entanglement purification. In these schemes, it is critical to protect the memory qubit from decoherence during entanglement operations on the communications qubit. Silicon, a platform with mature microelectronic and nanophotonic fabrication, is host to the T centre, an SPI with emission in the telecommunications O-band that directly integrates with silicon nanophotonics. Cavity-coupled T centres are a platform for brokered entanglement distribution in silicon photonic circuits and over long-distance optical fibre links. The T centre's electron and nuclear spin qubits are an intrinsic register of communication and memory qubits respectively, with anisotropic hyperfine coupling. In this work we determine the T centre's hydrogen hyperfine coupling tensor. We also introduce schemes to protect against dephasing or eliminate relaxation of the T centre's hydrogen memory qubit during optical excitation. These results address a key challenge for practical T centre quantum networks.