Understanding (and controlling) hyperfine interactions in semiconductor nanostructures is important for fundamental studies of material properties as well as for quantum information processing with electron, hole, and nuclear-spin states. Through a combination of first-principles densityfunctional theory (DFT) and k · p theory, we have calculated hyperfine tensors for electrons and holes in GaAs and crystalline silicon. Accounting for relativistic effects near the nuclear core, we find contact hyperfine interactions for electrons in GaAs that are consistent with Knight-shift measurements performed on GaAs quantum wells and are roughly consistent with prior estimates extrapolated from measurements on InSb. We find that a combination of DFT and k · p theory (DFT+k · p) is necessary to accurately determine the contact hyperfine interaction for electrons at a conduction-band minimum in silicon that is consistent with bulk Knight-shift measurements. For hole spins in GaAs, the overall magnitude of the hyperfine couplings we find from DFT is consistent with previous theory based on free-atom properties, and with heavy-hole Overhauser shifts measured in GaAs (and InGaAs) quantum dots. In addition, we theoretically predict that the heavy-hole hyperfine coupling to the As nuclear spins is stronger and almost purely Ising, while the (weaker) coupling to the Ga nuclear spins has significant non-Ising corrections. In the case of hole spins in silicon, we find (surprisingly) that the strength of the hyperfine interaction in the valence band is comparable to that in the conduction band and that the hyperfine tensors are highly anisotropic (Ising) in the heavy-hole subspace. These results suggest that the hyperfine coupling cannot be ruled out as a limiting mechanism for coherence (T * 2 ) times recently measured for heavy holes in silicon quantum dots. arXiv:2001.05963v2 [cond-mat.mes-hall]

We report on X-ray and gamma-ray observations of the millisecond pulsar (MSP) B1937+21 taken with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, XMM-Newton, and the Fermi Large Area Telescope. The pulsar X-ray emission shows a purely non-thermal spectrum with a hard photon index of 0.9 ± 0.1, and is nearly 100% pulsed. We found no evidence of varying pulse profile with energy as previously claimed. We also analyzed 5.5 yr of Fermi survey data and obtained much improved constraints on the pulsar's timing and spectral properties in gamma-rays. The pulsed spectrum is adequately fitted by a simple power-law with a photon index of 2.38 ± 0.07. Both the gamma-ray and X-ray pulse profiles show similar two-peak structure and generally align with the radio peaks. We found that the aligned profiles and the hard spectrum in X-rays seem to be common properties among MSPs with high magnetic fields at the light cylinder. We discuss a possible physical scenario that could give rise to these features.

In the envelope-function approximation, interband transitions produced by electric fields are neglected. However, electric fields may lead to a spatially local (k-independent) coupling of band (internal, pseudospin) degrees of freedom. Such a coupling exists between heavy-hole and light-hole (pseudo-)spin states for holes in III-V semiconductors, such as GaAs, or in group IV semiconductors (germanium, silicon, ...) with broken inversion symmetry. Here, we calculate the electric-dipole (pseudospin-electric) coupling for holes in GaAs from first principles. We find a transition dipole of 0.5 debye, a significant fraction of that for the hydrogen-atom 1s → 2p transition. In addition, we derive the Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling that is generated by this transition dipole for heavy holes in a triangular quantum well. A quantitative microscopic description of this pseudospinelectric coupling may be important for understanding the origin of spin splitting in quantum wells, spin coherence/relaxation (T * 2 /T1) times, spin-electric coupling for cavity-QED, electric-dipole spin resonance, and spin non-conserving tunneling in double quantum dot systems.

Hole spins in semiconductor quantum dots or bound to acceptor impurities show promise as potential qubits, partly because of their weak and anisotropic hyperfine couplings to proximal nuclear spins. Since the hyperfine coupling is weak, it can be difficult to measure. However, an anisotropic hyperfine coupling can give rise to a substantial spin-echo envelope modulation that can be Fourieranalyzed to accurately reveal the hyperfine tensor. Here, we give a general theoretical analysis for hole-spin-echo envelope modulation (HSEEM), and apply this analysis to the specific case of a boron-acceptor hole spin in silicon. For boron acceptor spins in unstrained silicon, both the hyperfine and Zeeman Hamiltonians are approximately isotropic leading to negligible envelope modulations. In contrast, in strained silicon, where light-hole spin qubits can be energetically isolated, we find the hyperfine Hamiltonian and g-tensor are sufficiently anisotropic to give spin-echo-envelope modulations. We show that there is an optimal magnetic-field orientation that maximizes the visibility of envelope modulations in this case. Based on microscopic estimates of the hyperfine coupling, we find that the maximum modulation depth can be substantial, reaching ∼ 10%, at a moderate laboratory magnetic field, B 200 mT. arXiv:1906.11953v2 [cond-mat.mes-hall]

In recent years, hole-spin qubits based on semiconductor quantum dots have advanced at a rapid pace. We first review the main potential advantages of these hole-spin qubits with respect to their electron-spin counterparts, and give a general theoretical framework describing them. The basic features of spin-orbit coupling and hyperfine interaction in the valence band are discussed, together with consequences on coherence and spin manipulation. In the second part of the article we provide a survey of experimental realizations, which spans a relatively broad spectrum of devices based on GaAs, Si, or Si/Ge heterostructures. We conclude with a brief outlook.