A high-sensitivity charge sensor for silicon qubits above one kelvin

Abstract

Recent studies of silicon spin qubits at temperatures above 1 K are encouraging demonstrations that the cooling requirements for solid-state quantum computing can be considerably relaxed. However, qubit readout mechanisms that rely on charge sensing with a single-island single-electron transistor (SISET) quickly lose sensitivity due to thermal broadening of the electron distribution in the reservoirs. Here we exploit the tunneling between two quantised states in a double-island SET (DISET) to demonstrate a charge sensor with an improvement in signal-to-noise by an order of magnitude compared to a standard SISET, and a single-shot charge readout fidelity above 99 % up to 8 K at a bandwidth > 100 kHz. These improvements are consistent with our theoretical modelling of the temperature-dependent current transport for both types of SETs. With minor additional hardware overheads, these sensors can be integrated into existing qubit architectures for high fidelity charge readout at few-kelvin temperatures.