Decoherence of a Driven Qubit

Abstract

We study decoherence of a field-driven qubit in the presence of environmental noises. For a general qubit, we find that driving, whether on-resonance or off-resonance, alters the qubit decoherence rates (including dissipation and pure dephasing), allowing both blue and red sideband contributions from the reservoir. Depending on the noise spectral density, driving field detuning and driving field phase shift, the qubit decoherence rates could be either accelerated or reduced. We apply our general theory to the system of an electron spin qubit that is confined in a quantum dot and driven by an in-plane electric field. We analyze how spin relaxation induced by the electrical noise due to electron-phonon interaction varies as a function of driving frequency, driving magnitude, driving field phase shift and spin-orbit coupling strengths.