Coherence of a hole spin flopping-mode qubit in a circuit quantum electrodynamics environment

Abstract

The entanglement of microwave photons and spin qubits in silicon represents a pivotal step forward for quantum information processing utilizing semiconductor quantum dots. Such hybrid spin circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) has been achieved by granting a substantial electric dipole moment to a spin by de-localizing it in a double quantum dot under spin-orbit interaction, thereby forming a flopping-mode (FM) spin qubit. Despite its promise, the coherence properties demonstrated to date remain insufficient to envision FM spin qubits as practical single qubits. Here, we present a FM hole spin qubit in a silicon nanowire coupled to a high-impedance niobium nitride microwave resonator for readout. We report Rabi frequencies exceeding 100 MHz and coherence times in the microsecond range, resulting in a high single gate quality factor of 380. This establishes FM spin qubits as fast and reliable qubits. Moreover, using the large frequency tunability of the FM qubit, we reveal for the first time that photonic effects predominantly limit coherence, with radiative decay being the main relaxation channel and photon shot-noise inducing dephasing. These results highlight that optimized microwave engineering can unlock the potential of FM spin qubits in hybrid cQED architectures, offering a scalable and robust platform for fast and coherent spin qubits with strong coupling to microwave photons.