QUROPE Quantum Information Processing and Communication in Europe

IThe SOLID group of Lieven Vandersypen recently published a paper in Physical Review Letters in which they investigated phonon-induced spin and charge relaxation mediated by spin-orbit and hyperfine interactions for a single electron confined within a double quantum dot. They extract an electron spin relaxation rate that varies nonmonotonically with the detuning between the dots and confirm this model with experiments performed on a GaAs double dot.  The results obtained demonstrated that the relaxation rate exhibit the expected detuning dependence and can be electrically tuned over several orders of magnitude. Analysis suggests that spin-orbit mediated relaxation via phonons serves as the dominant mechanism through which the double-dot electron spin-flip rate varies with detuning.