Optical control of TMDCs valley pseudospin qubits

Linked project

• This project is conducted by the same people as 👉 Control over the atomic spins within certain molecules by NMR technique

Group members

• XU ZIZHOU (Bensen)
  • Matric Number: A0229645W
  • Email: zizhou_xu@u.nus.edu
• CHU WENHAO
  • Matric Number: ...

Description

• The strategies and materials for building universal quantum computers are being actively researched, and various platforms for holding qubits have been proposed and tested. Within all the options such as superconducting qubits and ion trap qubits, solid-state qubits have illustrated great benefits of the compatibility with the existing semiconductor technology, which attracts lots of attention to this platform. Moreover, because of the direct band gap and strong spin-orbit coupling discovered in the monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), especially some semiconductor monolayers possess a sizeable direct bandgap of ≈1.5–2 eV in the optical range allowing electrostatic confinement and optical manipulation of carriers, chances are TMDCs materials have the potential to become the promising platform for fabricating qubits. There are four main types of TMDCs that have been suggested as advantageous in acting qubits, ${\text{WS}}_2$ , ${\text{WSe}}_2$ , ${\text{MoS}}_2$ and ${\text{MoSe}}_2$ . Kormányos et al used DFT calculations to confirm that ${\text{WS}}_2$ and ${\text{WSe}}_2$ , are better than ${\text{MoS}}_2$ and ${\text{MoSe}}_2$ in terms of the spin-valley coupling, which is really important since spin-valley coupling is regarded as a key factor that can improve the coherence lifetime of spin-valley states.

• After several decades of active research on the properties of TMDCs, some interesting features have been discovered. Such as the extra degree of freedom offered by valley magnetic moment, which can realise bit 0 and bit 1 to form a qubit in momentum space. In addition, these valleys are independently addressable by an optical signal, and optical controlling technique is currently under research by many groups both theoretically and experimentally. As a result, as inspired by the idea from one of the theoretical work, we intend to build a quantum simulator and investigate optical control of the spin-valley pseudospin on 2D heterobilayer TMDCs.

Q & A

What are K & K' points?

K & K' points

• K-points are sampling points of Brillouin zone in reciprocal lattice
• The monolayer TMDs have a unique band structure with the conduction and valence band edges both at the degenerate K and K‘ valleys at the corners of the hexagonal Brillouin zone. The direct-gap optical transitions have a selection rule: left- (right-) handed circular polarized photons couple to the interband transitions in the K (K’) valley only

Why choose heterobilayer TMDCs instead of monolayer

• There are four main carrier properties that optimal Opto-valleytronics should possess.
  1. long carrier lifetime
  2. long valley lifetime
  3. high valley polarization
  4. long valley coherence time
• By adopting 2D heterostructure TMDCs materials, we can create these conditions for building promising quantum platform. (eg. Due to the type II band alignment and weak hybridization of van der Waals heterostructure, the electron–hole layer separation, the electron–hole exchange interaction is greatly reduced, resulting in a long cryogenic lifetime (ns to $\mu$s)and valley lifetime (~ 10 ns) of the interlayer exciton)

Method

Principle

• It was shown that inversion symmetry breaking can lead to opposite circular dichroism in different momentum space regions, which induces an interesting phenomena of optical selection rules at the symmetry corner points of the Brillouin zone. This enables a valley-dependent control of electrons with optical signal of different circular polarizations.

Experimental setup

Quantum simulator

• We intend to use WSe2 2D heterostructure encapsulated in hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) as the physical platform, and ...

Qubit initialisation

• Use circularly polarised light to create valley exciton polarization
• Use linearly polarised light to pump the qubits to rotate the valley pseudospin in the superposition plane of K and K′ valley polarizations

Qubit control

• Most popular control techniques these days
  1. 1st approach: The coupling between the optical (electromagnetic) signal and the valley information can also be used to control the valley information. For the intralayer exciton, the exciton can be moved from one valley to another by applying intense THz radiation. This is shown by the observation of linearly polarized emission from higher-order sidebands when the sample is excited with a 100-fs near-resonant circularly polarized light pulse together with a 33-fs 40-THz pulse. Theoretically, it is shown that this is caused by a THz pulse driven intervalley transition. It is also predicted that a complete transfer from K (K’) to K’ (K) valley can be done within a period less than 5 fs if a more intense and shorter THz pulse is used.
  2. 2nd approach: On the other hand, by utilizing the optical Stark effect, the phase control has been demonstrated. In this case, the valley state is first prepared in the $|K⟩+|K^{\prime }⟩$ state by using a near-resonant linearly polarized excitation. A red-detuned 100-fs circularly polarized light pulse is then used to break the valley degeneracy, which allows the coherent rotation of the valley state to the $|K⟩+e^{i\Delta \varphi }|K^{\prime }⟩$ state with $\Delta \varphi$ depends on the pulse intensity and duration. This rotation is reflected in the linear polarization state of the exciton emission.

Qubit readout

• polarization of the photoluminescence