skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Search for: All records

Creators/Authors contains: "Nichol, John M."

Note: When clicking on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, you will be taken to an external site maintained by the publisher. Some full text articles may not yet be available without a charge during the embargo (administrative interval).
What is a DOI Number?

Some links on this page may take you to non-federal websites. Their policies may differ from this site.

  1. Free, publicly-accessible full text available January 28, 2026
  2. Free, publicly-accessible full text available December 1, 2025
  3. Abstract Surface acoustic waves (SAW) and associated devices are ideal for sensing, metrology, and hybrid quantum devices. While the advances demonstrated to date are largely based on electromechanical coupling, a robust and customizable coherent optical coupling would unlock mature and powerful cavity optomechanical control techniques and an efficient optical pathway for long-distance quantum links. Here we demonstrate direct and robust coherent optical coupling to Gaussian surface acoustic wave cavities with small mode volumes and high quality factors (>105measured here) through a Brillouin-like optomechanical interaction. High-frequency SAW cavities designed with curved metallic acoustic reflectors deposited on crystalline substrates are efficiently optically accessed along piezo-active directions, as well as non-piezo-active (electromechanically inaccessible) directions. The precise optical technique uniquely enables controlled analysis of dissipation mechanisms as well as detailed transverse spatial mode spectroscopy. These advantages combined with simple fabrication, large power handling, and strong coupling to quantum systems make SAW optomechanical platforms particularly attractive for sensing, material science, and hybrid quantum systems. 
    more » « less
  4. Abstract Electron spins in silicon quantum dots are promising qubits due to their long coherence times, scalable fabrication, and potential for all-electrical control. However, charge noise in the host semiconductor presents a major obstacle to achieving high-fidelity single- and two-qubit gates in these devices. In this work, we measure the charge-noise spectrum of a Si/SiGe singlet-triplet qubit over nearly 12 decades in frequency using a combination of methods, including dynamically-decoupled exchange oscillations with up to 512 π pulses during the qubit evolution. The charge noise is colored across the entire frequency range of our measurements, although the spectral exponent changes with frequency. Moreover, the charge-noise spectrum inferred from conductance measurements of a proximal sensor quantum dot agrees with that inferred from coherent oscillations of the singlet-triplet qubit, suggesting that simple transport measurements can accurately characterize the charge noise over a wide frequency range in Si/SiGe quantum dots. 
    more » « less
  5. null (Ed.)
    Abstract Semiconductor quantum-dot spin qubits are a promising platform for quantum computation, because they are scalable and possess long coherence times. In order to realize this full potential, however, high-fidelity information transfer mechanisms are required for quantum error correction and efficient algorithms. Here, we present evidence of adiabatic quantum-state transfer in a chain of semiconductor quantum-dot electron spins. By adiabatically modifying exchange couplings, we transfer single- and two-spin states between distant electrons in less than 127 ns. We also show that this method can be cascaded for spin-state transfer in long spin chains. Based on simulations, we estimate that the probability to correctly transfer single-spin eigenstates and two-spin singlet states can exceed 0.95 for the experimental parameters studied here. In the future, state and process tomography will be required to verify the transfer of arbitrary single qubit states with a fidelity exceeding the classical bound. Adiabatic quantum-state transfer is robust to noise and pulse-timing errors. This method will be useful for initialization, state distribution, and readout in large spin-qubit arrays for gate-based quantum computing. It also opens up the possibility of universal adiabatic quantum computing in semiconductor quantum-dot spin qubits. 
    more » « less
  6. null (Ed.)
    Abstract The transfer of information between quantum systems is essential for quantum communication and computation. In quantum computers, high connectivity between qubits can improve the efficiency of algorithms, assist in error correction, and enable high-fidelity readout. However, as with all quantum gates, operations to transfer information between qubits can suffer from errors associated with spurious interactions and disorder between qubits, among other things. Here, we harness interactions and disorder between qubits to improve a swap operation for spin eigenstates in semiconductor gate-defined quantum-dot spins. We use a system of four electron spins, which we configure as two exchange-coupled singlet–triplet qubits. Our approach, which relies on the physics underlying discrete time crystals, enhances the quality factor of spin-eigenstate swaps by up to an order of magnitude. Our results show how interactions and disorder in multi-qubit systems can stabilize non-trivial quantum operations and suggest potential uses for non-equilibrium quantum phenomena, like time crystals, in quantum information processing applications. Our results also confirm the long-predicted emergence of effective Ising interactions between exchange-coupled singlet–triplet qubits. 
    more » « less