Isolated electron spins in low temperature semiconductors are now recognized to have considerable potential in storing and manipulating quantum information. One of the attractions of a spin in a semiconductor is its extremely long decoherence time, since it has zero hyperfine interaction to nuclear spins in isotopically-purified structures. The tunable spin-orbital coupling and the ability to control the electron wave functions in semiconductors allow gate operations on the spins. Furthermore, the extensive collection of chipmaking techniques, cumulated over decades, is expected to be extremely invaluable for building a scalable processor. In order to physically implement spin-based quantum information processing, it is essential to control and measure the state of individual spins, which is a significant scientific challenge. In the last several years, key experimental demonstrations made by several groups around the world have considerably improved the prospects of quantum information processing based electron spins. In this talk, I will review these recent experimental breakthroughs.

ANL Physics Division Colloquium Schedule