Efficient and continuous microwave photoconversion in hybrid cavity-semiconductor nanowire double quantum dot diodes

Abstract

Converting incoming photons to electrical current is the key operation principle of optical photodetectors and it enables a host of emerging quantum information technologies. The leading approach for continuous and efficient detection in the optical domain builds on semiconductor photodiodes. However, there is a paucity of efficient and continuous photon detectors in the microwave regime, because photon energies are four to five orders of magnitude lower therein and conventional photodiodes do not have that sensitivity. Here we tackle this gap and demonstrate how microwave photons can be efficiently and continuously converted to electrical current in a high-quality, semiconducting nanowire double quantum dot resonantly coupled to a cavity. In particular, in our photodiode device, an absorbed photon gives rise to a single electron tunneling through the double dot, with a conversion efficiency reaching 6%.

Quantum Dot Source-Drain Transport Response at Microwave Frequencies

“…To measure the DC conductance G of the QD at the same operation point as Y (ω), we apply a DC bias voltage V SD to the voltage node point in the middle of the λ /2 resonator such that it does not disturb the resonance, but appears at the source contact of the QD [12,29]. The current I SD , measured from the drain contact, yields then the conductance G = dI SD /dV SD and enables the comparison of this low frequency transport result to the high frequency admittance Y (ω).…”

“…The ability to detect single electrons in the solid state is useful for a variety of applications, including spin qubit readout [1][2][3][4], electrical current and capacitance standards [5,6], studying cooper pair breaking [7][8][9], single-shot photodetection [10][11][12][13], and nanothermodynamics and fluctuations [14][15][16][17][18][19]. While many methods exist to detect charge, one of the main ways are by utilizing quantum dots (QD).…”

Calibration‐Free and High‐Sensitivity Microwave Detectors Based on InAs/InP Nanowire Double Quantum Dots

“…These figures of merit can be compared with nanoscale quantum-confined semiconductor devices including noise detectors operated in the 10-80 GHz range [23,24] and DQD devices coupled to MW resonators. [16] For the former architecture, a quantum efficiency of 10 −5 was computed by measuring the rates of competing relaxation mechanisms for photoexcited electrons. Our estimate of the quantum efficiency at the optimal coupling condition (4 × 10 −2 ) captures the intrinsic efficiency of the detection mechanism by taking into account the external power losses.…”

“…These include arrays of NW diodes [10] and NW field effect transistors [11] for probing THz radiation, [12,13] as well as NW quantum dot (QD) systems coupled to superconducting resonators. [14][15][16] NW QDs -can be realized electrostatically using gate electrodes [17][18][19][20] to control tunnel barriers and chemical potentials in the dots, resulting in zero dimensional systems with relatively large dot size and weak confinement owing to the small energy distance among quantum confined energy levels. These systems can be relatively easily exploited for MW emission [21,22] and detection down to single photons.…”

Photon and magnetic field controlled electron transport of a multiply-resonant photon-cavity double quantum dot system

“…Furthermore, if the electron-phonon interaction is taken into account in the DQD system, the amplitude and the phase response of the cavity field exhibit oscillations that are periodic in the DQD energy level with a detuning due to the phonon modes [26]. It has been recently shown that an absorbed photon gives rise to a single electron tunneling through a double dot, with a conversion efficiency reaching 6% [27]. The aforementioned results may have potential applications in the fields of quantum optics and quantum information science [28].…”