Charge and spin qubits in interacting quantum dots coupled to Rashba-active leads

Abstract

We present a unified study of charge and spin qubits encoded in a single interacting quantum dot tunnel-coupled to Rashba fermionic leads. The dot is described by an Anderson impurity Hamiltonian with either repulsive or attractive local interactions and a magnetic field of arbitrary orientation. In the repulsive regime, a spin qubit is encoded in the singly occupied spin sector, whereas in the attractive regime, close to the degeneracy between the empty and doubly occupied configurations, these two states define a charge-qubit subspace. We combine a weak-coupling Lindblad master equation in the Markovian secular limit with numerically controlled matrix-product-state simulations of the full dot-reservoir system. In equilibrium, we identify magnetic pair breaking in the attractive regime and a weak Rashba-induced magnetic anisotropy when the magnetic field is rotated relative to the spin-orbit axis. In the dynamical regime, relaxation and decoherence are controlled by the energetic gap between the logical manifold and nearby leakage states, and are further enhanced by Rashba-dependent tunneling. These findings show that even a minimal Anderson-impurity description captures key ingredients for coherent spin and charge qubits: the energetic structure of leakage states and spin-orbit-dependent dot-lead hybridization.