The spin of a confined electron, when oriented originally in some direction, will lose memory of that orientation after some time. Physical mechanisms leading to this relaxation of spin memory typically involve either coupling of the electron spin to its orbital motion or to nuclear spins. Relaxation of confined electron spin has been previously measured only for Zeeman or exchange split spin states, where spin-orbit effects dominate relaxation; spin flips due to nuclei have been observed in optical spectroscopy studies. Using an isolated GaAs double quantum dot defined by electrostatic gates and direct time domain measurements, we investigate in detail spin relaxation for arbitrary splitting of spin states. Here we show that electron spin flips are dominated by nuclear interactions and are slowed by several orders of magnitude when a magnetic field of a few millitesla is applied. These results have significant implications for spin-based information processing.

We manipulate a single electron in a fully tunable double quantum dot using microwave excitation. Under resonant conditions, microwaves drive transitions between the (1,0) and (0,1) charge states of the double dot. Local quantum point contact charge detectors enable a direct measurement of the photon-induced change in occupancy of the charge states. From charge sensing measurements, we find T1 approximately 16 ns and a lower bound estimate for T*(2) of 400 ps for the charge two-level system.

We report measurements of mesoscopic fluctuations of Coulomb blockade peaks in a shapedeformable GaAs quantum dot. Distributions of peak heights agree with predicted universal functions for both zero and nonzero magnetic fields. Parametric fluctuations of peak height and position, measured using a two-dimensional sweep over gate voltage and magnetic field, yield autocorrelations of height fluctuations consistent with a predicted Lorentzian-squared form for the unitary ensemble. We discuss the dependence of the correlation field on temperature and coupling to the leads as the dot is opened.

We report measurements of the cross correlation between temporal current fluctuations in two capacitively coupled quantum dots in the Coulomb blockade regime. The sign of the cross-spectral density is found to be tunable by gate voltage and source-drain bias. We find good agreement with the data by including an interdot Coulomb interaction in a sequential-tunneling model.

No abstract