Microsoft Research Blog

Semiconductor

  1. Andreev Modes from Phase Winding in a Full-Shell Nanowire-Based Transmon. 

    January 28, 2021

    We investigate transmon qubits made from semiconductor nanowires with a fully surrounding superconducting shell. In the regime of reentrant superconductivity associated with the destructive Little-Parks effect, numerous coherent transitions are observed in the first reentrant lobe, where the shell carries $2\ensuremath{\pi}$ winding of superconducting phase,…

  2. Destructive Little-Parks Effect in a Full-Shell Nanowire-Based Transmon 

    October 8, 2020

    A semiconductor transmon with an epitaxial Al shell fully surrounding an InAs nanowire core is investigated in the low E_{J}/E_{C} regime. Little-Parks oscillations as a function of flux along the hybrid wire axis are destructive, creating lobes of reentrant superconductivity separated by a metallic state…

  3. Anodic Oxidation of Epitaxial Superconductor-Semiconductor Hybrids 

    September 16, 2020

    We demonstrate a new fabrication process for hybrid semiconductor-superconductor heterostructures based on anodic oxidation (AO), allowing controlled thinning of epitaxial Al films. Structural and transport studies of oxidized epitaxial Al films grown on insulating GaAs substrates reveal spatial non-uniformity and enhanced critical temperature and magnetic…

  4. Parity-Protected Superconductor-Semiconductor Qubit 

    July 29, 2020

    Coherence of superconducting qubits can be improved by implementing designs that protect the parity of Cooper pairs on superconducting islands. Here, we introduce a parity-protected qubit based on voltage-controlled semiconductor nanowire Josephson junctions, taking advantage of the higher harmonic content in the energy-phase relation of…

  5. Shadow-wall lithography of ballistic superconductor-semiconductor quantum devices 

    July 27, 2020

    The realization of a topological qubit calls for advanced techniques to readily and reproducibly engineer induced superconductivity in semiconductor nanowires. Here, we introduce an on-chip fabrication paradigm based on shadow walls that offers substantial advances in device quality and reproducibility. It allows for the implementation…

  6. Topological superconductivity in hybrid devices 

    June 30, 2020 | S. M. Frolov, Professor Michael J Manfra, and J. D. Sau

    Topological superconductivity can emerge from the combination of conventional superconductivity in a metal and strong spin–orbit coupling in a semiconductor when they are made into a hybrid device. The most exciting manifestation of topological superconductivity is the Majorana zero modes that are predicted to exist…

  7. Suppressed Charge Dispersion via Resonant Tunneling in a Single-Channel Transmon 

    June 18, 2020

    We demonstrate strong suppression of charge dispersion in a semiconductor-based transmon qubit across Josephson resonances associated with a quantum dot in the junction. On resonance, dispersion is drastically reduced compared to conventional transmons with corresponding Josephson and charging energies. We develop a model of qubit…

  8. Suppressed Charge Dispersion via Resonant Tunneling in a Single-Channel Transmon. 

    June 18, 2020

    We demonstrate strong suppression of charge dispersion in a semiconductor-based transmon qubit across Josephson resonances associated with a quantum dot in the junction. On resonance, dispersion is drastically reduced compared to conventional transmons with corresponding Josephson and charging energies. We develop a model of qubit…

  9. Closing of the Induced Gap in a Hybrid Superconductor-Semiconductor Nanowire 

    May 31, 2020

    Hybrid superconductor-semiconductor nanowires are predicted to undergo a field-induced phase transition from a trivial to a topological superconductor, marked by the closure and re-opening of the excitation gap, followed by the emergence of Majorana bound states at the nanowire ends. Many local density-of-states measurements have…

  10. Evaluation of synthetic and experimental training data in supervised machine learning applied to charge state detection of quantum dots 

    May 15, 2020 | Jana Darulova, Matthias Troyer, and Maja C. Cassidy

    Automated tuning of gate-defined quantum dots is a requirement for large scale semiconductor based qubit initialisation. An essential step of these tuning procedures is charge state detection based on charge stability diagrams. Using supervised machine learning to perform this task requires a large dataset for…

  11. In-plane selective area InSb–Al nanowire quantum networks 

    March 25, 2020

    Strong spin–orbit semiconductor nanowires coupled to a superconductor are predicted to host Majorana zero modes. Exchange (braiding) operations of Majorana modes form the logical gates of a topological quantum computer and require a network of nanowires. Here, we utilize an in-plane selective area growth technique…