Two electrons in a strongly coupled double quantum dot: from an artificial helium atom to a hydrogen molecule

We study the triplet-singlet relaxation in two-electron semiconductor quantum dots. Both single dots and vertically coupled double dots are discussed. In our work, the electron-electron Coulomb interaction, which plays an important role in the electronic structure, is included. The spin mixing is caused by spin-orbit coupling which is the key to the triplet-singlet relaxation. We show that the selection rule widely used in the literature is incorrect unless near the crossing/...

The transport spectrum of a strongly tunnel-coupled one-electron double quantum dot electrostatically defined in a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure is studied. At finite source-drain-voltage we demonstrate the unambiguous identification of the symmetric ground state and the antisymmetric excited state of the double well potential by means of differential conductance measurements. A sizable magnetic field, perpendicular to the two-dimensional electron gas, reduces the extent of the...

We consider a system of two purely capacitively-coupled singlet-triplet qubits, and numerically simulate the energy structure of four electrons in two double quantum dots with a large potential barrier between them. We calculate the interqubit coupling strength using an extended Hund-Mulliken approach which includes excited orbitals in addition to the lowest energy orbital for each quantum dot. We show the coupling strength as a function of the qubit separation, as well as pl...

We present a theoretical study of magnetic field driven spin transitions of electrons in coupled lateral quantum dot molecules. A detailed numerical study of spin phases of artificial molecules composed of two laterally coupled quantum dots with N=8 electrons is presented as a function of magnetic field, Zeeman energy, and the detuning using real space Hartree-Fock Configuration Interaction (HF-CI) technique. A microscopic picture of quantum Hall ferromagnetic phases correspo...

We present exact solutions for two interacting electrons on an artificial atom and on an artificial molecule made by one and two (single level) quantum dots connected by ideal leads. Specifically, we calculate the accumulated charge on the dots as function of the gate voltage, for various strengths of the electron-electron interaction and of the hybridization between the dots and the (one-dimensional) leads. With increasing of the (negative) gate voltage, the accumulated char...

We present a theory of laterally coupled quantum Hall droplets with electron numbers (N1,N2) at filling factor $\nu=2$. We show that the edge states of each droplet are tunnel coupled and form a two-level artificial molecule. By populating the edge states with one electron each a two electron molecule is formed. We predict the singlet-triplet transitions of the effective two-electron molecule as a function of the magnetic field, the number of electrons, and confining potentia...

We have measured a graphene double quantum dot device with multiple electrostatic gates that are used to enhance control to investigate it. At low temperatures the transport measurements reveal honeycomb charge stability diagrams which can be tuned from weak to strong interdot tunnel coupling regimes. We precisely extract a large interdot tunnel coupling strength for this system allowing for the observation of tunnel-coupled molecular states extending over the whole double do...

We describe the theory of few Coulomb-correlated electrons in a magnetic quantum dot formed in graphene. While the corresponding nonrelativistic (Schr\"odinger) problem is well understood, a naive generalization to graphene's "relativistic" (Dirac-Weyl) spectrum encounters divergencies and is ill-defined. We employ Sucher's projection formalism to overcome these problems. Exact diagonalization results for the two-electron quantum dot, i.e., the artificial helium atom in graph...

We theoretically investigate the Stark shift of the exciton goundstate in two vertically coupled quantum dots as a function of the interdot distance. The coupling is shown to enhance the tuneability of the linear optical properties, including energy and oscillator strength, as well as the exciton polarizability. The coupling regime that maximizes these properties results from the detailed balance between the effects of the single-particle tunneling, of the electric field and ...

The total spin of correlated electrons in a quantum dot changes with magnetic field and this effect is generally linked to the change in the total angular momentum from one magic number to another, which can be understood in terms of an `electron molecule' picture for strong fields. Here we propose to exploit this fact to realize a spin blockade, i.e., electrons are prohibited to tunnel at specific values of the magnetic field. The spin-blockade regions have been obtained by ...