Real-time detection of single-electron tunneling using a quantum point contact

By Lieven M. K. Vandersypen, J. Elzerman, R. Schouten, L. V. Beveren, Ronald Hanson, L. Kouwenhoven. 2004

143 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We observe individual tunnel events of a single electron between a quantum dot and a reservoir, using a nearby quantum point contact (QPC) as a charge meter. The QPC is capacitively coupled to the dot, and the QPC conductance changes by about 1% if the number of electrons on the dot changes by one. The QPC is voltage biased and the current is monitored with a current–voltage (I–V) convertor at room temperature. We can resolve tunnel events separated by only 8??s, limited by noise from the I–V convertor. Shot noise in the QPC sets a 25?ns lower bound on the accessible timescales.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/caf79065db1dd8f45cdc86d9bb688b2f33270564

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Citations in the corpus

Spins in few-electron quantum dots (2006, background): “Optimized charge sensing setups typically have a bandwidth that allows tunneling to be observed on a microsecond timescale (Fujisawa et al., 2004; Lu et al., 2003; Schleser et al., 2004; Vandersypen et al., 2004).”
Single-electron current sources: towards a refined definition of ampere (2012, background): “In practical devices, however, the noise spectrum up to 1-100 kHz depending on the setup is dominated by 1/f -like charge noise that is intrinsic to the sample but whose microscopic physical origin is still debated (Buehler et al., 2005; Starmark et al., 1999; Vandersypen et al., 2004).”
Scalable gate architecture for a one-dimensional array of semiconductor spin qubits (2016, background): “We now demonstrate high sensitivity charge detection through the observation of real-time tunneling events [27, 28].”