Computational Methods for Designing Semiconductor Quantum Dot Devices

Abstract

Quantum computers have the potential to solve certain problems in minutes that would otherwise take classical computers thousands of years due to the exponential speed-up certain quantum algorithms have over classical algorithms. In order to leverage such quantum algorithms, it is necessary for them to run on quantum devices. Examples of such devices include, but are not limited to, semiconductor and superconducting qubits, and semiconductor single and entangled photon emitters.

The conventional method of constructing a semiconductor qubit is to apply gates on a semiconductor surface to localize electrons, where the electronic spin states are mapped to a qubit basis. Examples of this include the spin qubit where the spin-1/2 states of a single electron is the qubit basis and the gated singlet-triplet qubit where the states of two coupled electrons are mapped to a qubit basis. In general, gated semiconductor spin qubits are subject to decoherence from the environment which alters the electronic wavefunction by entanglement with the nuclear spins and phonons in the lattice compromising the stability of the qubit.

Semiconductor nanostructures can also be designed as photon emitters. Self-assembled quantum dots are an example of such nanostructures and have been shown to emit single photons through exciton recombination and entangled photons through biexciton-exciton cascade. The difficulty in designing photon sources using self-assembled quantum dots is that the size and shape varies from dot to dot, implying that the electronic and magnetic properties also vary.

In this thesis, I present the design of a single photon emitter using an InAsP quantum dot embedded in an InP nanowire and the design of a singlet-triplet qubit that is topologically protected from decoherence using an array of such quantum dots embedded in an InP nanowire. The advantage of using quantum dot nanowires over self-assembled quantum dots as photon emitters is that the quantum dot thickness, radius and composition can be controlled deterministically using a technique known as vapour-liquid-solid epitaxy which allows the emission spectrum to be engineered. Using a microscopic model, I simulated an InAsP quantum dot embedded in a nanowire with upwards of millions of atoms and showed that the emission spectrum came in agreement with the actual InAsP/InP quantum dot nanowires that were fabricated at the National Research Council of Canada. Moreover, I showed that altering the distribution of As atoms in the quantum dot can cause dramatic change in the emission spectrum. For the design of the topologically protected singlet-triplet qubit, I demonstrated that the ground state of an array of such quantum dots embedded in an InP nanowire, with four electrons in each dot, is four-fold degenerate and is topologically protected from higher energy states, making the ground state robust against perturbations. This state is known as the Haldane phase and can be understood in terms of two spin-1/2 quasiparticles at each edge of the array. Though the spectral gap in my simulation was of the order of 1 meV, this work provides insight into the potential design of a room temperature operating Haldane qubit where the spectral gap is of the order of room temperature.