Abstract
The control of solid-state qubits requires a detailed understanding of the decoherence mechanisms. Despite considerable progress in uncovering the qubit dynamics in strong magnetic fields1,2,3,4, decoherence at very low magnetic fields remains puzzling, and the role of quadrupole coupling of nuclear spins is poorly understood. For spin qubits in semiconductor quantum dots, phenomenological models of decoherence include two basic types of spin relaxation5,6,7: fast dephasing due to static but randomly distributed hyperfine fields (∼2 ns)8,9,10,11 and a much slower process (>1 μs) of irreversible monotonic relaxation due either to nuclear spin co-flips or other complex many-body interaction effects12. Here we show that this is an oversimplification; the spin qubit relaxation is determined by three rather than two distinct stages. The additional stage corresponds to the effect of coherent precession processes that occur in the nuclear spin bath itself, leading to a relatively fast but incomplete non-monotonic relaxation at intermediate timescales (∼750 ns).
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Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to L. Cywinski for most useful and enlightening discussions. Furthermore, we gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Deutsche Forschungs Gemeinschaft via SFB-631, and the Nanosystems Initiative Munich, the EU via S3 Nano, and BaCaTeC. K.M. acknowledges financial support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the ARO (Grant W911NF-13-1-0309). Work at LANL was supported by the US Department of Energy, Contract No. DE-AC52-06NA25396, and the LDRD program at LANL.
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A.B. and D.R. performed the experiments and data analysis with T.S. and P.-L.A. providing expertise. A.R. carried out the sample processing. F.L. and N.A.S. performed the theoretical calculations. A.B., P.-L.A., K.M., F.L., N.A.S. and J.J.F. wrote the article. A.B., K.M. and J.J.F. conceived, led and managed the project.
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Bechtold, A., Rauch, D., Li, F. et al. Three-stage decoherence dynamics of an electron spin qubit in an optically active quantum dot. Nature Phys 11, 1005–1008 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3470
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3470
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