A Light-Hole Quantum Well on Silicon

Abstract

The quiet quantum environment of holes in solid-state devices has been at the core of increasingly reliable architectures for quantum processors and memories. [1][2][3][4][5][6] However, due to the lack of scalable materials to properly tailor the valence band character and its energy offsets, the precise engineering of light-hole (LH) states remains a serious obstacle toward coherent photon-spin interfaces needed for a direct mapping of the quantum information encoded in photon flying qubits to stationary spin processor. [7][8][9] Herein, to alleviate this long-standing limitation we demonstrate an all-group IV low-dimensional system consisting of highly tensile strained germanium quantum well grown on silicon allowing new degrees of freedom to control and manipulate the hole states. Waferlevel, high bi-isotropic in-plane tensile strain (> 1%) is achieved using strain-engineered, metastable germanium-tin alloyed buffer layers yielding quantum wells with LH ground state, high g-factor anisotropy, and a tunable splitting of the hole subbands. The epitaxial heterostructures display sharp interfaces with sub-nanometer broadening and show room-temperature excitonic transitions that are modulated and extended to the mid-wave infrared by controlling strain and thickness. This ability to engineer quantum structures with LH selective confinement and controllable optical response enables manufacturable silicon-compatible platforms relevant to integrated quantum communication and sensing technologies.