Loschmidt echo driven by hyperfine and electric-quadrupole interactions in nanoscale nuclear spin baths

Abstract

The nuclear spin bath (NSB) dynamics and its quantum control are of importance for the storage and processing of quantum information within a semiconductor environment. In the presence of a carrier spin, primarily it is the hyperfine interaction that rules the high frequency NSB characteristics. Here, we first study the overall coherence decay and rephasings in a hyperfine-driven NSB through the temporal and spectral behaviors of the so-called Loschmidt echo (LE). Its dependence on the NSB size, initial polarization, and coupling inhomogeneity are separately investigated, which leads to a simple phenomenological expression that can accommodate all of these attributes. Unlike the prevailing emphasis on spin 1/2, the NSBs with larger spin quantum numbers are equally considered. For this case, additionally the effect of nuclear electric quadrupole interaction is taken into account where its biaxiality term is influential on the decoherence. The insights gained from model systems are then put to use for two generic realistic semiconductor systems, namely, a donor center and a quantum dot that represent small and large nanoscale NSB examples, respectively. The spectrum of LE for large quantum dots can reach the 100 MHz range, whereas, for donor centers, it reduces to a few MHz, making them readily amenable for dynamical decoupling techniques. The effect of quadrupole interaction on LE is seen to be negligible for large quantum dots, while it becomes significant for donor centers, most notably in the form of depolarizing a polarized NSB.