Electrical readout of a spin qubit without double occupancy

Abstract

We identify a novel mechanism to read out a single solid-state electron spin using an all-electrical spin-to-charge conversion in a closed system. Our scheme uses three donors and two electron spins, one spin is the qubit, the other is a reference. The population in the third, originally ionized, donor is monitored with an electrometer. Energy-dependent tunnelling of the reference spin to the ionized donor is used to determine the state of the qubit. In contrast to previous methods [e.g., B.E. Kane, Nature (London), \textbf{393}, 133 (1998)] we avoid double electron occupancy of any site within the system, thereby eliminating the possibility of unwanted electron loss from the system. The single spin readout scheme described here is applicable to both electron and nuclear spin based quantum computer architectures.