Silicon as a model ion trap: Time domain measurements of donor Rydberg states

TitleSilicon as a model ion trap: Time domain measurements of donor Rydberg states
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2008
AuthorsN.Q Vinh, P.T Greenland, K. Litvinenko, B. Redlich, A.FG van der Meer, S.A Lynch, M. Warner, A.M Stoneham, G. Aeppli, D.J Paul, C.R Pidgeon, B.N Murdin
JournalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume105
Number31
Pagination10649-10653
Date PublishedAug
Type of ArticleArticle
ISBN Number0027-8424
Accession NumberISI:000258308500007
KeywordsACCEPTORS, coherence, ELECTRONIC EXCITATION, free electron laser, hydrogenic donor impurity, picosecond, population dynamics, QUANTUM GATES, quantum information, RECOMBINATION
Abstract

One of the great successes of quantum physics is the description of the long-lived Rydberg states of atoms and ions. The Bohr model is equally applicable to donor impurity atoms in semiconductor physics, where the conduction band corresponds to the vacuum, and the loosely bound electron orbiting a singly charged core has a hydrogen-like spectrum according to the usual Bohr-Sommerfeld formula, shifted to the far-infrared because of the small effective mass and high dielectric constant. Manipulation of Rydberg states in free atoms and ions by single and multiphoton processes has been tremendously productive since the development of pulsed visible laser spectroscopy. The analogous manipulations have not been conducted for donor impurities in silicon. Here, we use the FELIX pulsed free electron laser to perform time-domain measurements of the Rydberg state dynamics in phosphorus- and arsenic-doped silicon and we have obtained lifetimes consistent with frequency domain linewidths for isotopically purified silicon. This implies that the dominant decoherence mechanism for excited Rydberg states is lifetime broadening, just as for atoms in ion traps. The experiments are important because they represent a step toward coherent control and manipulation of atomic-like quantum levels in the most common semiconductor and complement magnetic resonance experiments in the literature, which show extraordinarily long spin lattice relaxation times-key to many well known schemes for quantum computing qubits-for the same impurities. Our results, taken together with the magnetic resonance data and progress in precise placement of single impurities, suggest that doped silicon, the basis for modern microelectronics, is also a model ion trap.

URL<Go to ISI>://000258308500007
Division

GUTHz

Department

FELIX

PID

544ecff9bc61e82c32f808df6329ba10

Alternate TitleProc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A.

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